


Finding the Key

by eibbil_one



Category: Twilight
Genre: AU, Alternate Universe, Drama, F/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-09-16
Updated: 2010-09-16
Packaged: 2017-10-11 21:51:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 50,494
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/117496
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eibbil_one/pseuds/eibbil_one
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bella woke up in the Phoenix hospital and couldn't remember how she got there. A year later, she's living in Jacksonville with her mother, but she still has no memory of her four months in Forks. Can she recover what she lost by returning?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Preface

The steady, constant beeping was the first sound I registered. I kept my eyes tight shut as I tried to place it, fearful of opening them for reasons I couldn't quite name. I shifted, felt a tugging at my hand and the firmness of the mattress beneath me, and knew without doubt where I was.

Hospital.

I pulled in a deep breath, or tried to; the action was more painful than it should have been and I began to wonder just what I'd done this time. I came up blank. Slowly, I started to inventory the different aches and pains vying for my attention with each slight movement.

Leg. Chest. Arms. Hand. Back. Head. Damn. Was there a part of me that _didn't_ hurt?

After a moment, I settled on toenails and eyelids. Those were all right. Not good in the grand scheme of things, but I'd take it.

Again, I started to search for a memory of what had happened to me. Again, I came up with nothing concrete. There were flashes, small flickers of images that made no sense. It was like trying to look through someone's drawn drapes. There were only shadows. Shadows that made no sense at all.

Fluttering my uninjured eyelashes, I opened my eyes to take in the room around me. Sure enough, it was a hospital room. Sterile, white, boring and uncomfortable. I was just checking what little of my body I could see without moving, and sighing over the cast, when a movement in the corner of my room startled me.

"You're awake," a soft, musical voice filled the room, and for reasons I couldn't name, filled me with tension. My body stiffened, my heart rate went into overdrive. I wasn't scared, not exactly, but it wasn't a pleasant experience either. The increase in my breathing was causing a little too much pain for that.

"Yes," I answered softly, feeling the pull of my head wound when my brows drew together in confusion. The voice had seemed to come from the dim corner of my room, but I couldn't see the speaker. That unnerved me even further.

"What's wrong?" the boy in my room asked, moving closer to the side of my bed. I gasped. I'd seen my share of the magazine photos that graced the lockers of my classmates, seen the boys they'd stared at constantly - the one's they'd make fanning motions with their notebooks over – their images of male perfection.

The boy in my room made those models look like poster children for ugly.

But undeniable beauty or not, it didn't explain why he was here. Or who he was.

"Do I know you?" I finally said to the boy when he continued to move closer, my own unease over this stranger echoing in the increased beep of the monitors.

"Do you," he paused, blinked, "…pardon?" His brow now matched what I assumed mine looked like. Confused. And, I couldn't be sure as he was a stranger to me, but it almost looked like pain as well.

"Do I know you? I mean, do you work here or something, is that why you're in my room?"

He stopped moving towards me. No, he didn't just stop. He went completely motionless. I began to wonder just what sort of drugs they'd given me for my injuries if I was hallucinating this badly. People just didn't move like that, or stop moving like that I should say.

The boy continued to stare at me. Stare and nothing else; he didn't even blink.

And then he was gone. In the time it took me to blink my own eyes, the statue in my room had disappeared. As if he'd never been there at all.

With a sigh, and a mental note to ask my doctor about switching pain medications, away from the ones that caused visions at the very least, I lay my head back down and closed my eyes again.

 _Interlude – Edward_

The fight, or rather intense but heated discussion, had gone on for hours once it became painfully clear that Bella's "fall down the stairs" had left her with more than the obvious injuries, though those were bad enough in their own right. Left her, in effect, with nothing of the last four months but a memory of arriving in Forks and then waking here.

For our part, Carlisle, Alice and I had stayed to our corner of the waiting area, letting Charlie and Renee tangle with each other and with the doctors about Bella's care.

Charlie wanted Bella home, surrounded by familiar things. Renee was having none of that, bringing up her previous brush with death-by-ice-skidding van as more proof that Bella was safer with her.

It had cost him, cost him dearly by both his thoughts and expression, but he had acquiesced to Renee and the doctors. He'd agreed to let her go to Jacksonville when she was discharged; and agreed, very reluctantly, to not mention anything about her time in Forks when she did contact him. That hit him like a blow, one I could feel all the way across the room. I knew how much distance they'd spanned in their previously strained relationship over the past months – and knew he was losing just as much, if not more, than I was.

Not long after Renee had gone back into Bella's room to sit with her, Charlie glanced in my direction. I'd been prepared when he raised his head, bracing for the murderous thoughts he'd directed at me earlier – when he'd first caught sight of me in the waiting room. But that fight had already come and gone, Carlisle and I explaining Bella's abrupt departure and the reasons behind it, and our presence here now. Or, at least, the cover story of those reasons.

There was no rage in Charlie's eyes, though, when they met mine. No fury in his thoughts. All I saw, and heard, was empathy. We were both sitting here, losing her, and there wasn't a damn thing either of us could do to stop it.

I watched as he heaved himself out of his chair and walked over to stand in front of me. I didn't stand, giving him the height advantage and whatever comfort he could draw from it.

"I know my girl, Edward. She'll work through this, figure it out. She's a fighter."

He wasn't telling me anything I didn't know, though I would have thrown stubborn in there as well. Still, I listened.

"I won't have you jeopardizing her recovery by trying to push her to remember what she can't since the doctors say that'd be bad." The look on his face was a clear indication that he didn't agree in the slightest. "But if there comes a time…if she needs help…if she asks…well, then I guess it's fine with me if you try."

He seemed to have lost his affinity with words after that, his own grief at losing his daughter once again robbing him of even the ability to stand before me. He could only sigh, run a hand through his thinning hair, and nod once at me before turning and walking away.

I didn't think I'd ever feel as much in tune with Charlie Swan as I did in that moment.


	2. Chapter 2

"Mom, I've got to go back to Forks."

I watched as my mother paused with a coffee cup half-raised to her lips, watched her eyes widen in shock, watched the cup lower slowly back to the table.

"Why, baby? You hated it there."

There was something in her eyes, like she was expecting some grand pronouncement from me. I'd seen it before, on and off over the past year. But only when I mentioned Forks, or Charlie. Or my missing months.

I knew why, of course. Everyone was expecting me to remember. My doctors here, the doctor in Phoenix, even my father. But I hadn't and didn't expect to. If it hadn't happened in a year of trying, of regression hypnotherapy (Renee's idea) or the disturbing dreams I didn't understand? It wasn't going to. Those months were gone forever.

Or would be if I stayed here.

"Maybe I did, I don't know. I still don't remember any of it. But something I read last night…Mom, I'm never going to remember if I stay here. Nothing's worked so far and I think if I stay here I'm going to keep having the same results. There's nothing here to trigger the memories, to help me bring them back. I want to go back there, stay with Charlie for a month or two, see if being there helps. Seeing it all again, you know?"

I could see by my mother's eyes that she did know, and even more puzzling? That she didn't like it.

"Bella…," she began, but I cut her off. I knew her better than she knew herself, and stopping the protest before it began was always the key.

"Mom. Graduation's past, I've got two months before I start school again. It's the perfect time. The only time. Because I don't want this hanging over my head anymore, or following me into sleep. I need answers before I start the next part of my life. And I'm not getting them here."

For all intents, the discussion went on for another hour, but the result never changed. Neither of us swayed the other and, in the end, I was an adult now. I hated playing that card, but it was my trump card and it worked.

The rest was merely details. A phone call to Charlie, announcing my visit rather than asking if it was all right. I'd been expecting a repeat of the Renee discussion, but it hadn't come. After a few "are you sure" clarifications, he'd agreed happily with my decision. Almost too happily. If I'd been more myself, or at least sleeping better, I'd have wondered about that.

As it was, I was just too relieved to have the matter settled.

Everything was packed. I'd checked and double checked my bag several times, making sure that I'd not let any Jacksonville wear slip into the suitcase and had kept to the more durable Forks clothes I hadn't touched in a year. There'd only been one strange moment as I'd folded and placed the clothes into my suitcase. My hands had paused over a dark blue blouse, shaking so badly as I handled the material that it had taken several attempts to fold it properly.

Finally I'd forced the thing into my suitcase, taken a moment to sit on my bed and drag in several deep, calming breaths, willing the panic away before it could get a foothold. My pulse rate had skittered crazily in my chest, my breathing had tried to careen out of control, sweat had popped out on my forehead and neck, but I'd kept it from taking hold in the only way that had ever worked.

I'd stroked the crescent-shaped scar on my hand, the one that was just a little colder than the rest of my skin, until the last of the panic left me.

"This is why you're going back, Bella. This is why you have to go back."

It was what I'd not been able to tell Renee, or my therapist, or the endless other doctors I'd spoken to about my condition. Everyone had understood the nightmares, even the random moments of fear. But no one would understand what had just happened – that I'd just spent five minutes trying to calm myself out of a panic attack bought on by a shirt, a panic only eased completely by my connection to a crescent shaped mark on my hand.

The answer to that mystery was in Washington. And I was finally on my way to find it.

 _The dripping is annoying. That's the only word for it. I sigh and roll onto my back. Did Renee leave the faucet running again? Probably. I try to tune it out, to find sleep again, but I can't. The sound is too grating._

 _Plop. Plop. Plip. Plop._

 _I get up from my bed, determined to attack the faucet with a wrench if needed._

 _But I'm not in my bedroom. I'm in a forest. Rain forest? Something like that. It doesn't matter. I look around, but there's nothing there. Just lots and lots of green. Green overhead, green under foot. And rain. The plopping sound intensifies as the rain does. I know I have to get undercover, but I can't find anywhere to go. There's just me, standing in a field of green. I'm lost. Alone._

" _Bella."_

 _The voice calls from beyond the trees. Calls me. Lures me. I follow unthinkingly despite the rising panic. I shouldn't be here. I can't be here. If I find the voice, it'll hurt me. It will leave me. Irrational thoughts, but ones I know are true. I have to find the voice, but at the same time, I can't. Finding it will lead to pain._

 _I turn away, heading in the other direction. And then I'm running._

"Miss? Are you all right?"

The calm voice and warm hand on my shoulder pulled me from the dream. Before the screaming started, I hoped. I chanced a look around at the others on the plane near me and couldn't see anything off about their faces. Definitely no screaming then. Most likely, I'd just been babbling again.

"Yes, I'm fine. Thank you," I answered her, trying to put as much "go away" into my tone as I could. I'd done well enough with it, because the flight attendant merely nodded once and carried on down the aisle.

Sighing, I leaned back in my seat and reached over to pull up the window shade. We were just beginning our descent, if the popping in my ears was any indication, but we hadn't yet gone below the eternal cloud cover. Ripples of white spread out beneath us while the sun beat down bright and warm on the plane.

I looked over my shoulder, ensuring that no one was paying me any attention at all, then raised my scarred hand until it caught the light. I watched as the skin there glittered back at me, turning it this way and that, careful not to let the extent of the light it threw off carry to the ceiling overhead.

I'd first noticed the new oddity to my skin about a week after arriving in Jacksonville with Renee. I'd still been shaky, only two weeks out of the hospital, but I'd insisted on getting outside for some fresh air. Phil had helped me into a lounge chair in their backyard – both of them had done everything possible to keep me from having to use the crutches, a wise choice in my opinion. As I'd laid there, drifting in and out of the daydreams that would become my nightmares, I'd been distracted by the light on my hand.

My mouth had opened to call out to Renee, to tell her about the difference…but the words had died in my throat. It wasn't something I could tell her. Or anyone. I didn't know why, but that one fact was ingrained deep in the locked rooms of my mind. Whatever the scar meant, it was private, secret. So I closed my mouth and started keeping that hand in my pocket, or covered, whenever I was in the sun.

The captain's voice, announcing our imminent arrival into Sea-Tac airport, pulled me so violently from my reminiscences that I jumped a little in my seat. As the plane continued its descent, I kept my eyes out of the open window and waited for the clouds to pull me under once again.

The trip from the airport to Charlie's was much the same as it had been the first time I'd come here. It was one of the few memories I had still intact – that first day with Charlie.

"You look," he paused, "you look good, Bells," Charlie said as he held the door for me. The pause gave away his lie, just as mine always did, but I let it slide. Because I knew just what I looked like – I looked lost, adrift, and exactly like a person who hadn't seen restful sleep in months.

"Better than I did in the hospital at least, right?" I commented back, walking in and hooking my bag higher up on my shoulder. I looked around the small living room, the TV against the wall, the same sofa and recliner opposite it. It looked familiar, but not in a revelation sort of way.

"Much better than that," he returned, his voice trailing after me as I'd already started climbing the stairs. I crossed the small landing and walked into my old room, pulling in a deep breath of anticipation.

Nothing happened.

If I was expecting a rush of memories to hit me, I was sadly disappointed. I felt nothing more than a vague sense of homecoming, of familiarity.

But there was one surprise, a small tingle at the back of my neck. A sense that something was missing as my eyes darted to the window overlooking Charlie's front yard. Then the tingle was gone, just like my memories. Sighing, I dropped my bag onto the bed and left the room to its own devices for now. There would be time enough to explore the room later.

I spent the day exploring Forks, rediscovering the small, rainy little town. There were small flashes of memory, the Thriftway, the school. But nothing more than a sense that I'd been here before, nothing that would explain the locked doors in my mind. It was just another small town.

Why? Why couldn't I remember? It made no sense. None. And that, more than anything, filled me with anger. Anger at myself, at this place, anger at whatever had driven me to Phoenix one night during Spring Break and left me drifting alone.

My hands balled into fists and I shoved them deep into my pockets to hide the fury boiling through me. I'd just come back and I didn't want to give the people of this town any more reason to doubt the mental stability of their police chief's daughter.

Once I felt at least somewhat contained, I walked myself back to Charlie's in the fading light of the afternoon sun. I knew I needed the time to work through my anger, my frustration. I didn't want to give Charlie those same doubts either.

I played it over and over again as I walked. Waking up in Phoenix, body aching and mind reeling. The strange hallucination. Renee's panicked tears, Charlie's pained expression. And then the questions. Mine, theirs. Over and over again until I'd pled for quiet, for rest, time to search my own mind for answers.

Answers that never came.

In the end, I'd been able to piece together a sketchy timeline of what had happened. Sketchy because after it had become apparent that my brain had shut itself off from memories, no one had been very forthcoming with details. My doctor had told them all, apparently, that I needed to remember on my own, that any information they provided would only serve to confuse and frustrate me further. That there was a reason those memories were lost to me, that my brain was trying to shield me – and that the best course would be to wait until it was ready to remember. Until I was ready.

I'd fought about that, long and hard, but it had been in vain. Once the doctor had decreed it, everyone followed along, content to wait. But I wasn't content. I was angry, frustrated at a puzzle I could not solve.

From what I'd been able to figure out from the questions I'd been asked before even that avenue of information had been cut off, I'd left Forks the Sunday before Spring Break in a fit of anger. Anger over what? I still didn't know.

I'd gotten myself to Phoenix somehow, that was still unknown as my truck had never turned up. A day later I'd been found at the base of a staircase in a hotel near the airport, broken and bleeding, by a doctor staying at the same hotel. He'd stitched my head wound there in the staircase and brought me to the hospital where I'd languished in drug-induced coma for a few days.

And that was it. That was all I knew. It wasn't enough.

Our evening passed quietly, Charlie's and mine, a quick dinner and very little conversation. Charlie seemed even more close-lipped than I remembered him but there was something in his face I hadn't seen before. It was almost expectation, as if he was hoping my time here would unlock my mind as much as I did. Since I'd lost so much of our time together, I could understand that well enough to not dwell on it long.

Finally, when the yawns couldn't be contained behind my hand any longer, I stood and bid Charlie goodnight. My original thought had been to deconstruct every inch of my room that first night, but my trip through Forks and the walk back home had left my already sleep-deprived body too exhausted for anything more than dragging on the old sweats I slept in and curling under the covers.

The dripping is annoying. That's the only word for it. I sigh and roll onto my back. Did Renee leave the faucet running again? Probably. I try to tune it out, to find sleep again, but I can't. The sound is too grating.

 _Plop. Plop. Plip. Plop._

 _I get up from my bed, determined to attack the faucet with a wrench if needed._

 _But I'm not in my bedroom. I'm in a forest. Rain forest? Something like that. It doesn't matter. I look around, but there's nothing there. Just lots and lots of green. Green overhead, green under foot. And rain. The plopping sound intensifies as the rain does. I know I have to get undercover, but I can't find anywhere to go. There's just me, standing in a field of green. I'm lost. Alone._

" _Bella."_

 _The voice calls from beyond the trees. Calls me. Lures me. I follow unthinkingly despite the rising panic. I shouldn't be here. I can't be here. If I find the voice, it'll hurt me. It will leave me. Irrational thoughts, but ones I know are true. I have to find the voice, but at the same time, I can't. Finding it will lead to pain._

 _I turn away, heading in the other direction. And then I'm running._

"Sleep, Bella, sleep. It's all right now."

 _The voice comes out of the forest again. Close to where I run, closer than it should. The sound is at my ear, in my soul. The lure is there, the need to follow and run at the same time. But there is no panic, no fear. Just peace, a sense of being held, being safe. A haven from the chaos._

 _I drift back to the meadow, to the rain, and turn my face up to embrace it. And I sleep._

 _Interlude – Edward_

I'd never been able to countenance Bella's nightmares, though granted they had been few and far between in the glorious months we'd had together. Glorious, and much too short. Her dreams, when they'd made her restless, had been more for the mundane worries of her day – math exams, the howling wind outside her window, the loss of her beloved home in Arizona.

So it wasn't altogether improbable that I would climb through her window when the first sounds of her night terror reached my ears – climb through and hold her as I'd done before – until the worst of what haunted her passed.

I'd known it to be a foolhardy move, getting so close after so long separated from the mystical pull of her blood to my baser nature. I'd been prepared, though, for the onslaught, holding her while holding my breath at the same time. Her scent permeated even that restraint, and I felt the craving, the overpowering need to let loose the monster within me.

Those desires, however, were easily pushed aside. Having her there, in my arms again, her soft sounds, the now-steady beat of her heart, the warmth of her body, was enough to stem even the worst of me.

I would take this risk, I would overcome the raging need, to have this stolen moment with Bella. My Bella. In a place where her body, if not her mind, remembered me.


	3. Chapter 3

The light in the room awakened me. It wasn't sunlight, not here in Forks, but a brightening to the sky that indicated the sun was rising somewhere over the continual cloud cover. Still, it was light enough to wake me, which meant it probably wasn't raining. Yet.

I sat up and stretched, looking around the room as I did so. Something was different, or rather, something felt different. I took a moment to process, my still sleep-fogged brain searching the room, searching myself.

That's where the difference was. The room looked the same as it had last night, not so much as a book displaced. It was me that was different. I felt relaxed, refreshed; like I'd spent the hours resting rather than battling my way through the dark.

Odd, really, because my memory of that first night in Forks last year had been one of unease, restlessness and nothing like what I was feeling now. I decided to take I as a good omen for the day's events rather than think on it too much.

These days, anything new automatically counted in the "good" column.

Charlie was sitting at the kitchen table when I made it downstairs. There was a faint odor of eggs in the kitchen, so I knew he'd already eaten. I fished a pop tart out of the cupboard and put it in the toaster before joining him.

There was a little pang in my chest over the box of pastries. He'd remembered my favorites. For some reason, I had a flash of snow chains. My truck sporting snow chains. It made little sense to me, but, again, it was something new. I couldn't tell if it was a memory, or just a random image, but I filed it away just the same.

"Morning, Bells. Sleep well?" Charlie asked when I finally joined him at the table, pop tarts in hand.

"I did actually, thanks," I replied easily.

"Renee'd mentioned that you were having nightmares lately. Told me to watch for them," he said, but it sounded more like a question. A question that matched the raised eyebrow he shot at me across the table.

"They come and go," I responded, not meeting his eyes. "But I was fine last night. Slept right through the night." For the first time in forever, I thought but didn't add.

"Well, that's good then. Glad to hear it," Charlie beamed at me from across the table.

"You're cheerful this morning," I commented, eyeing him closer. Something was off. Very, very off. This was not the father I was used to, or thought I was used to. Charlie wasn't normally so upbeat…was he? I swallowed a groan of frustration and mentally beat at the closed doors in my mind.

Because the truth was, I had no idea if he was like this in the morning as I could only remember one of them.

"What're you up to today?" Charlie asked while rinsing out his coffee cup. "I could stay if you think it'll help."

I couldn't help noticing the fishing gear already lined up in the front hall when I'd come down so I waved off his offer easily. "No, Dad. You go off and drown a few worms. I'm just going to wander around the school today, I think. See if anything opens up."

"Opens up?" Charlie asked, clearly confused.

"Nothing," I smiled, waving off his question, "just a figure of speech for…" I trailed off and tapped my temple.

Charlie nodded and pushed away from the table. "Good luck with it then," he said with an awkward smile and left a few minutes later with a promise that he'd be home before dark.

I stayed at the table after he'd left. My eyes kept darting back to the chair Charlie had vacated as if I was expecting him to still be there. Expecting someone to be there. But there was only me.

As always.

I'd decided that I'd stop at the school first and see if that took me anywhere. Not only was it in keeping with my retracing my steps plan, but it was also the place I'd spent most time apart from Charlie's house.

Unfortunately, school was out here as well, so wandering the hallways and classrooms wasn't an option. I wondered if Charlie could use a little of his influence to allow me to wander around inside but decided, on balance, to hold that in reserve. If nothing else worked, I could ask for that as a last resort. Missing memories or not, the idea of walking into a high school again didn't appeal. It'd almost feel like I was repeating the experience. Repeating high school…who would ever want that?

 _The younger we are…the longer we can stay…_

I blinked, frozen where I stood in the empty parking lot, staring at the building in front of me. I felt my heart jump, and my pulse beat a bit louder in my veins. I gasped, too, one hand coming up to touch my chest.

It was a memory. I knew it was. It didn't make any sense, those two phrases from out of nowhere, but that didn't matter. What mattered was I remembered hearing them. Not saying them, hearing them.

I couldn't help the wide smile that crossed my face. Nonsense or no, I'd remembered something.

It was working.

"Hello."

My hand, still lying on my chest from the revelation, clutched at my shirt as I spun in response to the voice behind me. I'd thought I was completely alone here. I shook my head at myself; I must've been so lost in the sudden memory that I hadn't heard her approach.

Gaining control by degrees, and the shock at the sudden address, I tried to smile at the girl now standing in front of me. She was tiny, several inches shorter than my own 5'4" frame, with very pale skin and short, wispy black hair that seemed to go everywhere yet look insanely flattering at the same time. She was, quite possibly, the most attractive woman I'd ever seen up close, even with the shadows under her eyes. I wondered idly what was keeping her up at night.

"Hi," I responded uneasily. I was never much for small talk, especially with people I didn't know.

"Did I startle you? I'm sorry," the girl responded, her smile nearly as disarming as her bell-like voice.

"No, it's fine," I assured her, "I was just caught up in my own thoughts for a minute there."

"You did look a little lost. That's why I came over," she smiled again, extending her hand. "I'm Alice. Alice Cullen."

Her voice was so startling. The more I heard it, the more it drew me in. I don't know what I was expecting; tiny as she was, but the soft sound of her words gave the illusion of singing, not speaking. It was utterly mesmerizing and I faltered for a moment before remembering my manners.

"I'm Bella," I smiled, extending my own to take hers. She was watching me with a strange look on her face when our hands connected, almost anticipatory? Something like that. I didn't realize why at first until my skin touched hers. It was cold, very cold. Oddly, though, it didn't surprise me or phase me in the slightest. Almost as if I'd been expecting it.

And something about the satisfied look on her face made me wonder if I'd known this girl when I was here. I was just about to ask when we both heard the buzzing of a cell phone.

Her face crinkled up into a frown as she pulled it out and scowled further at the display. "Excuse me a moment," she said, flipping it over and turning her back to me with a sigh.

"What do you want? No, I'll not do that, thank you very much. What do you mean, why? Have I ever merely rolled over and allowed you to dictate to me? Right, so I'm not about to start now, besides, something's…no, of course I'm not going to do that, do you think I'm that cruel? Honestly, I do have feelings, you know. I'm just as…"

Her conversation, the parts of it I could hear, had been broken off with pauses while whomever was on the other end spoke but then she lapsed into silence. Or I thought she did. There was an odd sort of hissing sound, but that was gone before I could really start to figure out what it was.

Alice turned back to me with a rueful smile. "Sorry about that. My brother can be a little overbearing at times, as well as quite demanding when he wants his own way."

There was a screeching sound out by the street and I looked up to see a silver Volvo come to an abrupt halt maybe 50 yards away from us. No one emerged, but after a moment there was an insistent beep from the car's horn.

"See what I mean? Impatient about the wrong things, too patient about others."

I could feel my eyebrows pull together, not understanding her words at all. My attempt to clarify was cut off by another blare from the car. "It was nice to meet you, Alice," I said politely, wishing irrationally that she didn't have to go and glaring at the car that was making her departure all the more immediate. "Maybe I'll see you around again while I'm here?" I couldn't keep the hopeful tone out of my voice.

There was a pause and the girl's eyes went unfocused for a second. When she responded finally, her smile was wide and inviting. "You will, Bella," she trilled, almost laughing now. The loudest, longest horn blare yet followed her statement and she turned towards the car with a last wave to me. A minute later she was inside. It was accelerating away before she'd even managed to shut the door.

The sound of the tires squealing had my head whipping up. Just as it had when Alice startled me, my pulse and breathing shot straight into panic mode. I looked wildly around, my eyes darting here and there over the empty lot, searching for the van.

The van…

A blue van. It was skidding out of control, stopping just short of turning me into a pancake against my truck. Cold. The ground had been cold. I'd hit my head. A frightening near miss...right in this parking lot.

When I came back to myself, I was sitting on the asphalt, my head in my hands. One hand shifted along the back of my neck, up to my crown. Searching for a bump I knew wasn't there.

But there had been one. A painful one. When the van had careened out of control, when it had stopped, I'd hit my head when I…fell? Was pushed…? Out of the way.

I'd been loaded onto a stretcher, taken to a hospital. I remembered it; the embarrassment of the whole school watching, of Charlie fussing. I put a hand to my throat, cringing at the memory of the neck brace they'd forced onto me.

I remembered. And I knew where I was going next.

"It's really working," I repeated, laughing as I walked quickly away from the school towards the hospital.

If I'd walked into the Emergency Room of any hospital in Jacksonville, or Phoenix, even in the middle of the day, I know I'd have found something going on. A few people milling in chairs waiting to be seen, nurses and orderlies scurrying from exam rooms to the lab or X-Ray and ferrying patients along as they did so.

I knew this well from the number of them that I'd visited over the 18 years of my clumsy life.

Not in Forks, however. When the doors slid open to admit me, I was greeted with a nurse at the admit desk, poring over a magazine, and the sound of one coughing child somewhere behind her.

Thankfully, she didn't look up when I walked in and I was able to move past her down the corridor towards the rest of the hospital without being questioned. That was a good thing as I had no answer to give. I somehow doubted that a response of "just looking around" wasn't going to earn me any sanity points.

But I _was_ looking around; looking at each bed, the lights, the carts and trays standing against the walls of the corridor. I was still half-lost in the memory I'd found in the school parking lot. My ears were straining for sounds that would continue to act as triggers. Sounds, images, faces, voices, I searched for anything that could slide yet another key into the locks in my brain.

I sighed out my disappointed, leaning back against the wall. There was nothing here. Nothing but nothing. It was just another Emergency Room, another in a long list that I'd visited throughout my life.

Sighing, I turned to go, determined not to let this small setback get in the way of the progress I'd made just in my first day. I'd remembered something at least.

My feet had barely begun to move me forward when voices called out from the entrance to the ER.

"Someone get Dr Cullen. We're going to need him on this one," an angry voice called out as the sounds of the ER coming to life surrounded me.

"What happened? He's a mess," called another voice.

"Idiot thought he'd replace his own windows this year. On a ladder older than I am," came the response. "None of these look deep, but he's sliced to ribbons in some places…"

The smell hit me about the time I heard rushing footsteps behind me. Strong, overpowering, the rust and salt smell slammed into me like the vision of the van, knocking me to my knees. It was too much, too fast. I had no time to steady my breathing. The world went gray, then black. I was already unconscious before I fell. I must have been because I didn't feel myself hit the floor.

"I'm going to rip Alice….pieces."

"No….not."

"…saw this, I know she did… insist I come here?"

"Because she's…just as heartbroken…..watching you suffer?"

The voices made no sense to me. No real sense, anyway. I was still hovering in the blankness between aware and unconscious, lingering at the fringes of awake. Though the sounds were more like soft hisses, I could make out a few words.

I hovered at the edge of waking completely, fighting the instinct to open my eyes and let them know I was awake. I wanted to listen to more of this, more of the hypnotic speech hissing around me, most of it just beyond my ability to understand their words.

"…should go…wake at any…"

"…behind the…if I need…just…minute more…"

Something cold touched my cheek and traced a path along my cheekbone. Just one simple touch, one motion, and another lock clicked open. I'd felt this before. This same motion.

I knew this touch. I knew these voices.

There was nothing more than that – no names, no memories, just a surety that I was right. The same surety that had put me on a plane to Forks, that had me retracing every known memory I had from this town, that sent me to a hospital even though I loathed them.

It was there, I knew it. The key to all of this, to my inner torture over the last year, to the stock of memories locked away inside my head, was tied to the music around me and wrapped up in the cold touch to my cheek.

"I know you," I said, my own voice a whisper. My sudden comment must have surprised them, my two visitors, because there were twin intakes of breath on either side of me. Then there was a shift, the sound and feel of a light breeze over me.

But when I opened my eyes, I was alone.

"No!"

I sat up quickly, regretting the action the second I did so because the room spun around me again. "Wait!" I called out unthinkingly even though there was no one even close to me. "Please," I said, my voice even softer. "Please don't go."

There was no one to hear me, but it didn't stop me from speaking.

"Please," I said again. "I want to remember. But I can't do it alone. Please help me."

I could hear the desperation in my voice, feel it in the sharp intake of my own breath while I tried to hold back the grief. Had I come so close only to have it slip between my fingers? My head bowed and the silent tears came. I felt them spill down my cheek when my eyes closed and land with soft thuds the front of my shirt.

There was a cool touch to my face again, wiping away the tear trail down one cheek.

"Don't cry."

My eyes opened and slowly, I lifted my head.


	4. Chapter 4

My breath caught in a gasp when I looked up. The face before me was both expected and unexpected and I didn't know why. All I could trust at this point were the instincts. My first reactions were the only reliable indicator that I was on the right track, or at least moving in that direction.

"I'm sorry. Did I startle you? I didn't mean to. I'm Dr. Cullen," the achingly beautiful blond man before me said, his hand out towards me. It was cold and, again, this wasn't unexpected. "I'm sure you must be very disoriented," he continued when I couldn't speak, utterly unable to find my voice. "But you're fine. Not a bump or scratch on you. It appears you fainted just as my latest patient was being brought in."

His head cocked to the side as he regarded me or, rather, regarded the frown on my face.

"But you…I heard..." I broke off when he continued to look puzzled. "I heard you, when I was coming out of it. You and…someone else…." I glanced around, trying to look behind him for the source of that other voice.

My resolve didn't waver, even in the wake of his shaking head. "You might have heard me, Miss Swan, but I assure you, I've been treating Mr. Phillips since he arrived. I do tend to get a bit vocal while I'm working. Perhaps that's what you heard?"

 _The doctor was in on it._

I heard the phrase in my mind, another of those small doors opening, and recognized the memory. I'd had this conversation before, or something like it. And I'd had it in this hospital, while this doctor treated me. Knew it and embraced it.

"Dr. Cullen," I said, trying a different track. "Are you related to Alice Cullen? I met her earlier, at the school."

I watched him as closely as he watched me and another, more recent memory popped into the forefront of my mind. The whispers I'd heard as I'd come back to consciousness. Hadn't one of the words I'd heard been Alice's name? Their faces, their voices, their cool skin, even the shadows under their eyes – they had to be related, or connected in some way at the very least.

"Yes," he said, a little tentatively, but didn't offer more.

"You're her…brother?" I guessed even though the word sounded wrong.

"Father, actually." He continued before I could protest the obvious inability of this young man to have fathered a teenager of his own let alone several of them. "My wife and I have adopted several teenagers. In fact-"

There was a slight hissing sound behind me and then a low moan from somewhere behind him, cutting off the questions that had bubbled to the tip of my tongue. We both looked towards the sources. I turned to look behind me and he looked to his patient. When I found no reason for the hissing sound, I looked across the ER towards the other sound I'd heard. I saw the man who'd come in earlier, stirring on his gurney. I cut my eyes back to the doctor's just in time to see the flash of something...on his face. It almost looked like exasperation, but that made no sense.

"If you'll excuse me Bel—Miss Swan, it appears my other patient needs some attention."

He was gone before I could say another word, moving more quickly than should be possible. Again, though, it didn't seem wrong. To my ever-infuriating mind, it just looked right. Normal. Or normal for him at any rate.

The high from my eventful first day in Forks abated when two empty days followed it. Two days that passed with nothing more than flashes. Flashes that made no sense whatsoever and were, if possible, more frustrating that the blank spots.

The frustration was beginning to eat at me. It followed me into sleep and changed my dreams. The recurring dream I'd had since moving to Jacksonville had left me, only to be replaced by stronger nightmares. Nightmares that were getting worse as my irritation over the confusing nonsense that plagued my waking hours grew.

Voices speaking, but not words I understood. Music playing in my head, Debussy coupled with songs I didn't recognize. Screeching tires and soft, lyrical laughter. The crack of a baseball connecting with a bat – Charlie's nightly baseball obsession mixing in with the random images, no doubt. Tree limbs flying, car doors slamming, the smell of lasagna. My blood type, cellular mitosis, trig equations. Salt air, rushing waves, and dancing blue fires.

Did fire ever turn blue? I didn't think so. Sometimes, it seemed, my images were nothing more than fantasy which made it harder to sort the pictures into possible memory or pure imagination.

I tried to hold each image, though, hold it and study it for any connection I could find to my few months in Forks but each time they slipped from my mind like sand through my fingers. Leaving me with nothing I could match up with the sketchy memories I'd already unearthed.

Not that those memories had helped much. What had I found? I'd known Alice Cullen and her adoptive father, the doctor. That doctor had treated me once after some sort of incident with a van in the school parking lot. I knew both Cullens well enough that their beautiful faces, musical voices, and cool skin were not strange to me.

Knew them, but apparently not well enough that they'd help me sift through the random pieces I had to complete the puzzle. Both had nearly run from me, the doctor's face clear in his relief to be away. True, Alice had been called away by that insistent car blaring from the street. My frustration bubbled up again. Damn who'd ever been behind the wheel of that Volvo, anyway. Because though the doctor had not been comfortable, Alice certainly had been. A car engine purred in my mind, low and powerful, only to be replaced by the deafening roar of my truck.

Had I been in the car that whisked Alice away? I thought back over the sound of the squealing tires when it had pulled away from the school and thought that I might have, but there was nothing concrete enough for me to pull another door open.

I turned all of this over and over all day and into the night. Alice had been willing, but the doctor had been…what? Leery? Afraid?

I was standing in my bedroom, looking down over Charlie's front door, my hands on the windowsill. There was nothing to see but a green lawn, my father's cruiser, and the wet asphalt of our street, but I was still compelled to stare. Something about the window drew me again and again.

And then one voice, one phrase, crashed in loud and insistent. It came out of nowhere and effectively shut down every flash, every flicker, and had me staggering to my bed to sit before my knees gave out completely and dumped me onto the floor.

This time it was a voice I knew. Knew because it was mine.

 _I'm not afraid of you._

Even though the house was quiet, the sentence reverberated around me, almost as if I could feel the words along my spine, down to the very marrow of my bones. Because with that memory, that phrase, came the certainty that it was a lie.

I was afraid, or had been. Very, very afraid. And some part of me still was. Afraid of the "you?" I had no way of knowing. The thought felt both wrong and right at the same time. But there was fear here, fear of some nebulous, something I couldn't see.

I felt the first stirrings of a panic attack and worked to keep it banked. I moved backwards to lean against my headboard, fingers searching out and stroking my odd little scar. When I felt it working, the comfort from the cold crescent on my hand, I concentrated on deep breathing, to further relax my body, to ease the unsteady pounding of my heart before it could gallop out of control. My eyes closed and slowly, very slowly, my body unwound. My pulse quieted, my breathing deepened, and I drifted.

 _I'm running. Flying. Moving fast. The trees and brush are green blurs on either side of me. I hold tight. Arms hold me tighter. I'm laughing._

 _I'm not afraid._

 _Sounds behind me. Chasing. Chased. But I'm safe. Protected._

 _A low growl and I pull away. I have to. I have to jump, to move, to save. Her? Him? I don't know. Fear pulses through me but I have no other choice. I have to…to… I'm afraid to move, more afraid to stay. The loss would be unbearable._

 _Pain. There's pain here. I'm flying again, crashing down. Pain is all I know. It's everywhere – body and soul. It burns me from the inside, moving through me, deep, deeper. It rips me in two. Rips away what's precious…what's more vital than breathing._

 _I'm not afraid._

 _You should be. My fault. Leaving._

 _No! I scream, then scream it again. No!_

 _Yes._

 _I can feel it slipping away, feel my soul breaking in half. I moved, I left, I wasn't afraid, but I should have been. Should not have jumped, should have thought. My recklessness will bring pain beyond imagining, my pain will lead to more. I'm set adrift, apart, away._

 _I'm losing everything._

 _Don't leave me._

 _But it's too late. I'm already alone._

"NO!"

I woke screaming, my arms extended towards something. Someone? I wasn't sure. Whatever it was, whatever I'd lost, I'd run from of my own accord. Fear had driven me from safety into pain. This was my fault.

I buried my head in my hands and wept for a loss I didn't understand but felt down to the depths of my soul.

 _Interlude - Edward_

There were times when our heightened senses were more curse than blessing. As I stood under cover of the trees behind Bella's house, listening to her harsh and ragged sobs, and being utterly unable to do anything but uproot several saplings, I decided curse was too mild a word.

Torture was a bit more apt.

I could hear every harsh intake of breath, every tear fall, and each struck me like a lance through my decades-dead heart. I'd barely made it from her room before she'd bolted awake. And now here I stood, listening to her fall apart, my hands itching to comfort her.

When Alice had had her vision, when she'd told me Bella was coming back, my only thought had been to stay away from her. Horrid as the interminable days without her had been, I knew it was for the best. Bella was free of me, in the best possible way. Free to live her life without fear or pain, without the danger inherent in being anywhere near me.

It was what I wanted. From the moment I realized I loved her, and knew I should stay away regardless. That thought, that idea, was a very easy one to think. Putting it into practice had proved impossible.

Now I had my second chance. A perfect chance. What better way to make sure Bella stayed safe? She could visit Forks and leave again none the wiser. With the Cullens in general, and me in particular, nothing more than a blank spot in her subconscious that she would eventually not even mind missing. It was four months of our lives. Arguably a shorter time for me, given the decades I'd already endured, but still.

Would she even miss these lost months ten or twenty years from now?

Another sob broke through my musing. I felt the pain of it spear me once again. I had to lock my muscles to keep from springing back through that window.

Who, exactly, was I kidding?

I knew that just as before there would be no staying away. The fact that I was standing here destroying local fauna was proof enough of that.

I must be bound for hell as I'd always thought – my good intentions were still paving that road nicely. And just like last time, I wasn't going to follow them. I couldn't.

Bella was in pain. And I was doing nothing to stop it. I'd thought myself a monster for loving her, for keeping her close when it was so dangerous. But was I less of a monster for not helping her past the pain plaguing her? For letting her linger in this limbo of not knowing when I knew that unanswered questions were like slivers under her skin?

As I fought with myself, her sobs quieted into sniffles, and finally into deep breathing. She started muttering not long after. Then she spoke, clearly enough for me to hear her even from my hiding place.

"I miss you."

My body went rigid. Another tree limb snapped in my hand and I felt again the all-encompassing weight of my love for her. Just as I had the night she'd first spoken my name, my feelings engulfed me, carried me. How could I stay away?

Bella settled into deep sleep and I relaxed. Then I began to think. For the first time since I'd known she was coming back, I thought of the possibility of seeing her again. Face to face.

What if I stopped hiding? Stopped lurking in the shadows like some B-Movie adaptation of my true nature? Could I handle watching her regard me with confusion and suspicion again? Her warm, brown eyes seeing nothing but a stranger?

I didn't know. But with the echo of her wrenching grief still ringing in my head, the soft reminder that her life was as bereft without me as mine was without her, my ability to keep my good intentions was losing strength. Rapidly.

I left her house and started the walk home when she was finally deeply asleep. With every mile, my course changed. Call and find a way to see her, don't call and keep her safe but miserable. Moving at slower than human speed, the trip home took the remainder of the night and the sky was a clouded dawn when I arrived.

Alice was waiting for me when I got there, a scowl on her pixy face and her toe tapping in clear agitation. She stalked towards me and snatched the phone from my pocket. Before I could take it back, she was already punching in numbers.

"Your wavering is giving me a headache, Edward. Just make the call and see what happens. Give in to it, why don't you?"

I tried to protest, but she cut me off with a look. "You know you're going to again anyway. Honestly, if angst were an Olympic event, you'd be setting records. You love her, she loves you. Let her see you, talk to you. At least give her the chance to make her own decisions. Give her that much."

She hit "send" before I could grab it away. She held the phone just long enough for us both to hear the groggy voice on the other end. Then she thrust it into my hand and dashed back into the house.

Resigned, I put the phone to my ear and spoke.

"Charlie? It's Edward Cullen," I paused, let that sink in and then continued. "She asked. Not me, not directly, but she asked." I knew he wouldn't need clarification, even in his sleep fogged state, so I kept speaking without pause. "But I need your assistance if I'm going to help her."

Drained didn't begin to cover the state of my consciousness when I finally roused myself from sleep the next morning. Slowly, I padded my way down the stairs and rounded the corner into the kitchen. Charlie was there, surprising for a Saturday, the paper spread on the table before him.

"Morning, Dad," I croaked, my voice still hoarse from last night's tears.

"Morning, Bella," he answered absently, not raising his eyes from the news he was reading.

I rummaged in the cabinets for cereal and bowl, preparing my breakfast though I wasn't very hungry. I ate quietly while Charlie read, the unasked question about how I'd slept the night before hanging between us. I wasn't sure if I'd screamed in my sleep, but I knew by my puffy eyes that I'd cried. Charlie, not on good speaking terms with female emotional bursts, had apparently decided not to ask the question he didn't want answered.

I appreciated that. It had been a difficult enough night, spent curled up and broken by dreams I didn't understand. Charlie didn't need to suffer along with me.

"This reminded me of something," he said finally, turning the paper toward me and pointing to a story about a new statue being dedicated in the somewhat larger town of Port Angeles. "You and your friends spent a lot of time in Port Angeles while you were here, dinner, shopping, that sort of thing. I wondered if you'd want to try walking around there a little today. Weather might just hold up for it."

I turned the town's name over in my head as I chewed the last of my cereal. It meant nothing to me apart from being the stopover on the plane trip from Jacksonville. I remembered buildings passing by after Charlie'd picked me up, but nothing beyond that.

Still, though, a ripple of excitement ran along my spine. After days of nothing new, and a night of anguish beyond bearing, suddenly I had another direction to go. Another place to explore, to mine for keys to doors that were not only staying closed, but trying to lock down again in the wake of last night's pain.

"That sounds great, Dad. Thanks."

After I'd showered and dressed, we'd climbed into the cruiser and headed off. Neither of us being particularly good at small talk, we let the radio fill the silence as the car slowly ate up the miles between Forks and Port Angeles. An hour later we pulled to a stop outside what looked like a department store.

I gathered up my purse and pushed the heavy door then turned to face Charlie.

"You're sure you want to do this alone?" He asked, a wrinkle of concern over his forehead.

"I'm sure, Dad. I'll meet you back here in a few hours." I paused, smiled. "I'll be fine."

Charlie merely nodded and straightened in his seat when I exited the cruiser and shut the door. I watched him drive away. I drew in a deep breath and exhaled slowly. I let my eyes travel up and down the street, searching for anything that looked even remotely familiar. I didn't count the golden arches of a McDonald's at the end of the street.

Resolved to find at least one recognizable thing, from my past anyway, I set off down the street, leaving the clothing store behind me. I walked for a while, past a bookstore that looked like it specialized more in New Age fare than the classics and fiction. I glanced into other stores, still finding nothing of interest, nothing that even touched at my memory.

Then I turned a corner and I felt it again – the sense of unease that had no cause in reality. It was similar to how I'd felt standing in the parking lot at the school, imagining a phantom van skidding towards me. The van hadn't been there, but the fear had been.

The fear was here, too. Something had happened in this town (this street?), and it hadn't been pleasant. But I was beyond caring about only wanting to see fluffy-bunny types of memories. I wanted it all, the good and the bad, and damn the consequences.

I let my feet carry me, turning on this street, around that corner, not paying as much attention to direction as I did to the sights and smells around me. None of them were very interesting. Boarded up or otherwise vacant business fronts, a few bits of trash in the gutters, an incredibly seedy looking bar, closed by the looks of it.

I stopped. The slight elevation in my pulse from the anticipation of memory kicked into high gear when I looked at the door to the bar.

 _Don't be like that, Sugar._

Again, there it was. Crisp and clear as if the man's voice was right behind me rather than in the past. I knew I'd heard someone say that, knew that someone was connected to this bar. This place. To the fear that was dripping icicles down my spine.

That's when my flight instinct took over. It didn't matter that I was alone on this street in the middle of a cloudy afternoon, all my body knew was that it needed to get out of here. Now.

I didn't run, I wasn't that foolish, but I walked quickly, eyes darting over my shoulder every few steps to look for a menace that wasn't there. All the while I tried to calm myself, to ease back the panic, but nothing worked. Not even random touches to the odd scar on my hand. I just knew I needed to move, needed to get out of here, needed to…

The breath rushed out of me in a whoosh as I walked straight into a wall. I staggered back a few steps, shaking my head at my own irrationality, for losing track of things so much that I didn't even notice myself turning.

Except that I hadn't turned. And I hadn't walked into a wall, either. Not unless walls in Port Angeles had hands that came out to steady freaked-out tourists.

"Are you all right?" The wall asked me, dropping its hands when it finally appeared that I wasn't about to crash to the ground.

I looked up, my head seeming to know just where it would need to go to look into the face in front of me.

Then my knees gave out completely and I crumpled.


	5. Chapter 5

The wall had released me, but snatched me back up a second later when my legs gave out. Hands, strong and cold, but gentle at the same time, held me tight and kept me from hitting the ground.

No, not a wall. A beautiful boy with amber eyes and a singularly breathtaking face. I was stunned more completely than if I really _had_ walked into a wall. My vision blurred.

"Bella? What is it?" he asked softly, his tone concerned.

In that second, I was glad he hadn't released me from his second attempt at keeping me from landing on the concrete. His voice. So like the doctor's, so like Alice's, but different at the same time. Different and mesmerizing, soft as a caress, it pulled me from the darkness lingering around the edges of my vision. I blinked my eyes, clearing the gray spots, and tried to focus again.

I saw his eyes first. Brown, I thought, but changed my mind almost immediately They were gold. Warm, like melted caramel, and completely locked on mine. I opened my mouth, but no sound came out. I just gaped because I'd finally managed to focus enough to see his face. Any thought I had of speaking, or at least saying anything that wasn't complete gibberish, fled while I stared into his stunning face. Had I ever seen anyone as beautiful as this boy?

My eyelids fluttered against another click in my mind. Had I?

"Hello? Are you in there?" he repeated, concern evident in his voice even as one corner of his mouth twisted up into a half-smirk.

I felt that smile clear down to my toes. It set my heart racing harder than any panic attack I'd ever had. It thudded in my chest like a wild animal straining to get free. I was extremely glad that he couldn't hear it.

"I'm...I'm fine," I managed, my own voice rough in comparison. Not to mention shaking. "I...I think I can stand up now," I added because he was still holding me. I regretted speaking as soon as the words were out.

The look on his face said that he wasn't entirely convinced of that. "Right, of course," he replied and his breath washed over me.

A moment before I hadn't thought that anything could be more appealing than his eyes or his voice, or that beautiful face and its crooked smile. Then the perfume of his breath assaulted my senses. That scent proved my previous thought wrong, though I doubted very much that there was any part of this boy that wouldn't appeal to me. I was still working through all the havoc he was wreaking on my senses, when he straightened up and broke all physical contact with me.

He took a few steps backwards, and I whimpered at the loss. My body even swayed towards him and it took a real effort to keep my feet planted just where they were.

Still, though, I stared. I couldn't stop myself and, in truth, I didn't really try. My eyes were riveted to his face, drinking in every detail like he was a tall glass of water and I'd just come from a solo trip across the Sahara.

Then, somewhat abruptly, my wits came back to me. I blinked up at the beautiful boy, trying not to be distracted by his face, voice or breath, and I realized what I'd missed earlier.

"You called me Bella," I gasped.

It was his turn to blink. "Yes, I suppose I did," he answered, his brows contracting.

"You knew me? When I was here before?"

The frown deepened just as something utterly indescribable flashed in his eyes. Those eyes. I couldn't look away, neither could he. Our gazes locked as if neither of us could bear to break that contact and I began to wonder. Just how well had I known him? How well _could_ I know him if I didn't even know his name? That, at least, was easily rectified.

"What's your name?"

"My name is Edward Cullen," he said simply. Then he held his hand out to me, I shook it automatically. It was like taking hold of a live wire – a current of energy zinged up my arm and I momentarily lost the ability to form rational thought.

I shook my head, closing my eyes as well to help myself focus. He knew me, but there was nothing inside me – no concrete memory save the sense memories that were assaulting me.

But were they true memories? Or was I drawing from what I'd experienced with Alice and the doctor, the other Cullens I'd met since my return?

"I'm sorry I don't remember you, Edward." Lack of memory aside, I couldn't stop the thrill that shot through me when I said his name. My conscious mind didn't remember him, but if my body's reactions were anything to go on, some part of me did. "We were friends?" It should have been a statement, but it ended up coming out as a question.

"Yes, Bella," he said, softly, his voice lower. "We were friends."

This time, I was able to pay attention. There was something in his voice when he spoke. Relief? Regret? Sadness? Happiness? I couldn't tell. But the mystery of it intrigued me and I was determined to figure it out. How could anyone say one thing but give the distinct impression he meant something else?

I somehow managed to speak beyond the frantic pounding in my chest his simple statement caused. "It's nice to meet you, Edward. Ah, again, I guess."

He flashed his crooked smile again and for the first time in what felt like forever, I felt heat rise into my cheeks. I was blushing.

His hand raised, reaching towards me again like when he'd shaken my hand, but then he dropped it.

"Likewise," he intoned. The moment stretched, the two of us standing feet apart, our eyes locked together as if unable to move by even the slightest degree. I could see something working behind the deep gold of his eyes, but I wasn't sure what.

"Will you tell me what happened? After you left, I mean."

I bit my lip and he moved to my side as we started walking away from the closed down pub towards the main part of the town.

"You stopped coming to school," he continued when I said nothing. "After Spring Break. No one was sure why, but there was a rumor that you were hurt somehow. Then Chief Swan told everyone that you'd just gone home to live with your mother."

"Yes, that's right. I went to Jacksonville to live with my mom."

Ever since waking up in that hospital, there had been one surety. One thing I knew beyond all reason or logic. There was something secret about my leaving Forks. Something I couldn't tell anyone. Secrets I was compelled to keep even though I didn't quite understand why.

"Why did you leave? Were you that unhappy in Forks? I mean, I know it wasn't your favorite place to be, with all the green and the constant rain, but you'd seemed to be growing fond of it. Or did you just miss your mom and Phil more than you wanted to help her not feel so bad about missing him when he traveled?"

I chanced a look at him from the corner of my eye. I knew my face must have been registering shock of some sort. I'd told him all of that? Just how close had Edward and I been? Friends, he'd said. But if he knew that much...

"Actually, it's still sort of a mystery. I left Forks and somehow ended up in Phoenix, at a hotel. I fell down the stairs and...when I woke up in the hospital...," I trailed off. The hospital...

My brow creased as a door in my mind rattled. There was something there, like trying to place a line of dialogue to the right movie, but, like everything else, it danced just out of my reach. I sighed.

"When you woke up in the hospital...," he prompted me.

"I didn't remember anything."

"Anything about what?"

"About Forks, about living here. I lost it all, Edward. All I remembered clearly was my plane trip out here that January. The four months in between were a complete blank. And they still are. For the most part."

"That must be incredibly frustrating," he sympathized. He turned a bit to face me, a question in his eyes. "For the most part?"

"Yes. Since I've come back, I've had a little luck. Little flashes of memory. Things I did, people I knew, places. It's not much, but it's a start. It's why I came back in the first place. Why I had to come back, even though my mom wasn't too thrilled with the idea. I hoped that spending time here, in Forks I mean, might help me remember."

I thought I heard Edward's teeth grind together, and when he didn't speak, I continued.

"Unfortunately, the flashes I've gotten aren't connected. Completely random. They don't make linear sense, but I'm pretty sure they're the memories trying to break through. Nothing like this ever happened in Jacksonville, so I must be on the right track. I just wish I could find the right key," I ended, my voice a little harsh with my own frustration.

"Key?"

"Yeah, that's what I started calling it, for lack of anything better. It's like my mind's got all these doors in it, you know? Locked doors with memories behind them. Every now and then, one opens and I get a little flash..."

"And you're looking for the key that will open them all?"

"Yes," I said, relieved to finally have someone understand. It was so easy, so natural talking to Edward as he walked beside me through the streets of Port Angeles. We must have been very close at some point, very good friends rather than merely acquaintances. I'd never made friends easily, never felt comfortable talking to strangers. But Edward? I felt like I could tell him everything - like maybe I already had.

Like many of the other things that had happened since coming back, it made no sense. Because of that, I went with it. "Would you help me? Tell me a little of what my life was like during the months I was here?"

He stopped walking at once. No, he didn't just stop. He literally froze in place where he stood. The action caused another little flicker in my mind, another click without a corresponding door opening. Frustration welled in me again. "Edward?" I moved after speaking, closing the distance between us and reaching out my own hand to touch his. It was cold, just as Alice's and the doctor's had been, but just as with those touches, it was expected.

Exactly how close had I been to this quiet, beautiful boy and his family? I was not a tactile person by nature, too much Charlie in me for that. So why was it that touching him seemed natural? More than that, it felt necessary.

He came back to himself by degrees, blinking first before the rest of his frame relaxed. "I could do that, yes," he finally responded and his mouth raised into another crooked smile. My heart stuttered again and I resisted the urge to bring my free hand to my chest to calm it. That was when I realized that our fingers had intertwined when my hand touched his.

Neither of us moved to break the connection.

His smile widened and he squeezed my fingers, as if he'd noticed our hands at the same time I had. I felt my knees threaten to crumple again under the weight of that smile.

"I don't know if anyone's ever told you, but your smile is dangerous," I said a little breathlessly, unable to help myself from smiling in return.

"Not in those words, no," he answered, laughter evident in his voice, "but I was told once that I had a tendency to dazzle people."

I tried the word out in my head. Dazzle. With as much of a critical eye as I could muster under scrutiny from his piercing eyes, I studied him and my reactions to him.

"Couldn't have come up with a better way to phrase it myself," I laughed.

We resumed our walk, his hand still holding mine. I chanced a look at him and he was still grinning his crooked smile.

"What?"

"Nothing. I was just wondering," he paused and looked over at me, "does that mean I dazzle _you_?"

I stumbled when his eyes caught mine. He steadied me so quickly I barely even fell off our stride. "I'd say that's obvious, wouldn't you?"

His lips moved, but I didn't hear him speak. And, to be honest, at the moment I was too wrapped up in him to spend too much time thinking about it. I'm sure I'd find plenty of time for that. Later.

We continued our walk, ignoring the people we passed as Edward told me about some of our classmates in an attempt to help open my closed doors. He tossed out names I couldn't put faces to at all: Jessica, Tyler, Angela, Ben, Lauren, Mike. I couldn't be sure, but I thought I saw him smirk when the last name registered nothing in my closed off brain. I didn't dwell on it too much. I was too busy losing myself in the music of his voice.

I told him about the flickers I'd had, the little pictures and sounds. Some of them he didn't know - like the fantasy blue fire I'd imagined. But for some others, he was able to piece the images together into real stories about things that had happened to me while I was here.

I found out I was right about the screeching tires and talking to the doctor. Apparently, a van had gone out of control on a patch of ice in the parking lot and nearly crushed me, but I'd escaped that one with nothing more than a bump on the head. His father, Carlisle Cullen, had treated me after the near-accident. While I couldn't see the whole of the scene, at least I knew I was truly regaining memories.

We were right outside a restaurant when his story about the skidding van ended and he looked up. I was thrilled to see his half-smile again. He stared at the door to the restaurant for a long time before turning his butterscotch eyes back to mine.

"Are you hungry, Bella?"

I wasn't, not for food anyway. But I was filled with an insane notion that if I said no, he'd disappear. It was wholly irrational, I knew that, but it didn't make the feeling less intense. I wanted to keep him with me, keep him talking.

"I could eat," I answered him finally.

He held the door for me and we both stepped through into the darker confines of the Italian restaurant. I was just about to ask him another question when the hostess gasped.

"You're back!"

While I could totally understand the hostess' smile and gushing sentiment, it didn't mean I had to like it. She was too attractive for that.

Then I realized that Edward hadn't even looked at her, he was still looking at me.

"Oh," she said then. "You're both back. That'd be a table for two, right?"

My eyes cut to the hostess because she sounded just as confused as I felt. Back? What did she mean we were both back?

"Back?" I asked when the hostess left us at our table. "Have we been here before? Together, I mean."

He stared at the menu in front of him for a long time, spinning it on the table. He didn't meet my eyes when he finally spoke. "Yes."

The word hung between us, him staring at the wood of the table, me staring at the top of his odd, bronze-colored hair. "I think I knew that, too," I finally said, jumping back a little when his head snapped up.

"You did?"

"Yes," I confessed. "I don't tend to go around spilling my life history to strangers, Edward, but I can't seem to stop myself around you. It's not something I can explain, but it just is, you know? And if I felt close enough to tell you about Renee and Phil and why I came to Forks, we must have been close friends, right? Or maybe..." I felt that blush rise to my cheeks again and I couldn't continue.

The waitress interrupted before he could answer me. We placed our drink orders while she shot meaningful looks at Edward, looks he didn't see because his eyes were fixated on me. It should have felt uncomfortable, I should have been squirming away from the attention, but the only reaction I had was an increase in my heart rate and an overpowering need to reach across the table to touch him again.

He saw my hand coming and moved his own to below the table. His facial expressions were shifting, changing every few seconds like there was some sort of internal war going on behind his golden eyes. I broke it the only way I knew how.

"Am I wrong?" I asked, looking at the place where his hand had been a second before.

The war continued on his face. His shoulders tensed and this time I was positive I heard his teeth grind together. I waited. Finally, he raised his eyes to mine. Whether the battle had been won or lost, I didn't know. Neither, it seemed, did he. When he spoke, his voice was clear of all emotion. "You're not."

Again the silence descended like a blanket over us both. My eyes were riveted to his face and realization struck me like a blow to the stomach. I wasn't the only one who'd suffered through my accident and the resulting amnesia. I had gone on to Jacksonville without thinking about what I'd left behind in Forks, because that part was a black hole in my brain. But Edward...Had he been here, awaiting my return only to hear that I wasn't coming back? To hear that from rumor, from others talking, rather than from me. Compassion flooded through me and I reached across the table again, laying my open hand in a silent plea.

Whether or not the war was over inside his mind, he gave way enough to bring his hand back up above the table and take mine. Our fingers interlaced, warm and cold, and I squeezed his in return. I heard so many clicks in that second, my brain felt like a clock factory. Clicks…and one door opening.

It was sense more than sound, touch more than image. His hand in mine, cold and strong, my fingers tracing against his skin, his cheek pressed over my heart and the erratic pulse beat beneath it. A quiet moment in time while my body warmed his.

"I'm so sorry," I said when I raised my face to his at last. My lashes blinking against the moisture that had pooled there while the image washed over me.

"What?" His voice was whisper-soft but filled with incredulity.

"I'm sorry, Edward. You were important to me. I…I remembered something just now. A flash, an image of your our hands, then your cheek," I let my hand raise to cover my heart, unable to put his remembered action into words, "you were important. No one's ever, I've never let anyone that close and," I was babbling, struggling to say it right and failing miserably. "I left without saying goodbye." My voice broke on the last word.

His reaction was fierce, and instantaneous. His hand pulled from mine in a flash of movement I barely registered and his face twisted from wonder straight to anger. For the first time in his presence, I felt fear move along my spine. "You have nothing to be sorry for, Bella. Nothing. It wasn't your fault, none of it. It was mine. Completely mine," he finished, his anger, though ebbing, still palpable.

"I don't believe that," I answered, proud of the fact that my voice shook only marginally.

He snorted, leaning back to run a hand through his already tousled hair. "You never do, especially when you should," he said, resigned. How could anyone go from insanely angry to dead calm in just a few seconds? I wondered then if he'd always had such violent mood swings.

I was about to ask, but his head turned to the side and he sighed. "Charlie's waiting for you, Bella."

His tone was so matter of fact, I rose from the booth without questioning it. I watched as he tossed money on the table to cover our drinks and led me through the restaurant and out the door.

It wasn't until we were on the street that I remembered that I hadn't told him that Charlie had brought me here. Or that we'd arranged to meet for the trip home. Edward, his hand on my elbow, steering me towards the cruiser, didn't give me a chance to ask him how he'd known.

He opened the passenger side door for me and gave Charlie a nod of greeting before looking back to me. "Some other time, Bella," he said softly.

Then, as if he couldn't help himself, his hand raised again and his backs of his fingers brushed against my cheek.

"Soon?" I asked, unable to keep the plea out of my voice. I felt my chest tighten and my pulse beat erratically, not wanting to say goodbye to him.

He was waging war again but this time, I saw the surrender in his eyes when it came. "Soon, Bella. I promise."

I was still staring at him when Charlie pulled away from the curb and started the drive back to Forks.

 _Interlude – Edward_

She was smiling. Even in sleep, her talking no more than mutters, she smiled.

Not trusting myself to touch her again, my skin was still burning from earlier, I kept to the rocking chair. Every breath in and out filled the room with her scent, torturing me in the best way possible.

"Edward," she mumbled into the darkness, rolling over to stretch out on her stomach.

"I'm here, Bella love," I answered. My voice was so low she didn't have a hope of hearing, but I felt the need to say it anyway.

I saw earlier. Saw and heard her reaction when we parted by Charlie's car. I remembered the way she'd looked, her physical changes, when I said things that could be construed as goodbyes. Apparently, even without remembering them, her body still reacted the same way.

As I'd thought that first night in this room since her return, her body remembered me, even if her mind did not. And I didn't know what to do about that.

A year ago, I'd never intended to tell Bella what I was, or I'd hoped to not have to tell her that. I'd hoped for the strength to stay far enough away that she'd never need to know.

But not only had that not worked, Bella had figured it out on her own. Granted, she'd been given a push in the right direction by Jacob Black, but no grand pronouncements had been necessary from me. I'd simply had to fill in the blanks and dispel a few Hollywood myths.

There was no Jacob Black this time. No superstitious stories to point her in the right direction. Oh, I was sure he was still there, on his reservation and still thinking his father a superstitious fool. But there was no connection there for Bella, no memories she'd need to unearth on the small reservation that I couldn't provide myself. So no need for her to go there. No need for those complications to enter into the equation.

"Bella, I'm really a vampire," I said in the same soft voice, well out of her hearing. Even here, talking to myself, I knew what would follow. This time she was sure to have the reaction I'd always expected. Running and screaming. Without a doubt. She'd had months to come to her conclusions before, to observe and research so that when the suspicions had been confirmed, they weren't a shock.

"Don't…," she muttered and I registered the increase in her pulse and breathing, "please...stay with me..." Bella rolled over onto her side and flung out an arm, reaching.

Best intentions aside, there was no way I could deny her plea.

I was at her side a second later, the rocking chair not moving so much as an inch after I left it. I lay down beside her and wrapped an arm around her waist.

"I'm here, love," I whispered, leaning down to press my lips to her hair. "I'm here."

Her breathing settled, as did her heart, and I felt it clearly when she slipped into the quiet of her deepest sleep.

And I resolved. Tomorrow I would take her to the one place more tied to us than any other. And I would tell her.

And if, as I suspected, she left when she knew what I was – I would do my best to let her go at last.


	6. Chapter 6

I stirred against waking, pressing my eyelids tight together to keep them from opening and ending the blissful night I'd spent. My dreams had been just that. Dreams. No nightmares, no confusion, no terror.

Just me. Just Edward. Talking. Holding hands. Walking through deep woods as he peppered me with questions and I did the same. But while he got answers, I did not. Every question I asked of him came with a response I couldn't hear. The confusion of that had me reaching out to him, and he'd come to me. Peace stole over my dreams then, easy, restful sleep with nothing more in it than the soft sound of his voice, and the melody of a song I couldn't place.

But the damage was done. I was awake, and lying here with my eyes closed wasn't going to change it. I sat up and ran both hands through the tangled mass of my hair, then over my face. I gasped.

Edward's scent, that sweet almost hypnotic scent, filled my nose, my mind. I inhaled deeply, craving more, and I was rewarded. It was everywhere in my room. I must've been too accustomed to it after spending so much time with him yesterday that I didn't notice it had clung to my clothes and hair.

I didn't care how it had happened; all that mattered was that some part of him was still with me until I could see him again.

 _Soon_ , he'd said.

But how soon was soon? Today? Tonight? Next week?

The idea of the last option pulled the corners of my mouth down. No, he couldn't wait that long, could he? The idea was abhorrent, but I had no choice in the matter. He hadn't given me a phone number and I had no idea where he lived.

Not that I would have gone in search of his house intent on stalking there until I saw him – I wasn't quite that far gone. But it would have been an option.

Resigned to the fact that I was helpless to do anything but wait, I rose from the bed to get dressed for the day.

An hour later I was in the kitchen, hunting up breakfast. I'd stood staring at the running shower for nearly five full minutes before calling myself an idiot and stepping in. The idea of forgoing it, just to keep the scent of Edward in my hair? I was embarrassed to have even had that thought. So I'd stepped in and gone about my routine as normal.

The shirt I'd worn yesterday was, of course, a different matter.

The knock at the door startled me and I dropped the box of cereal in my hand. It landed with a soft _thump_ followed by the sound of scattering Cheerios. I left the mess for the moment and walked the short distance to the front door. My pulse was uneven as I told myself to settle down. It was probably just a neighbor, or the mail man, or…

"Edward!"

I gasped once the door was open and I saw him, standing on my doorstep like he showed up there every day. Every instinct in me wanted to launch forward, to bury myself in his arms. My feet even twitched in that direction, but I held myself in check.

"Good morning," he answered softly, his hand raising and a single finger drawing down the curve of my jaw. I shivered in response, but it had nothing to do with the temperature of his skin.

"What are you doing here?" I blurted out, then blundered forward when he raised one eyebrow. "Not that I'm not happy you're here, I am. Very much so. I just didn't expect…"

He silenced me by pressing a single finger to my lips. My eyes raised to his, questioningly.

"One of the things I used to do was drive you to school in the morning," he explained. "I thought, perhaps, if I kept close to that routine, it might help you find a few more keys. Besides, I also promised I'd see you soon, didn't I?"

"You did," I agreed, relief that it hadn't been the week-long wait I'd been dreading. This was better than I could have ever expected. "Um, do you want to come in? I've got a little mess to clean up in the kitchen and…"

"Yes, I would," he said, stepping into the house when I moved aside to let him in. "You get the cereal," he grinned down at me, touching a fingertip to my nose, "I'll hang up my coat."

"How did you know I'd spilled the cereal?"

"I heard you, just as I walked up to the front door."

"You _heard_ that?" I asked, astonished. The small rings had barely made a sound when they'd scattered and I'd been right there in the kitchen. How…? Then my question lead to another question, one I'd been too mesmerized to ask yesterday.

"Is that anything like how you knew that Charlie was waiting for me out in front of the restaurant? When I hadn't told you that he was even _in_ Port Angeles? What, do you have super-hearing attuned to fathers and breakfast foods?"

I was joking when I finished, but the look on his face wiped the laughter from my face. His lips were working, opening and closing, as another battle waged across his face.

"Yes," he said grimly, "something like that."

I gaped at him. "I was kidding," I said, my voice sounding breathless.

"I wish I was," he said in the same grim tone. "When you're finished eating," he said before I could question him again, "I'd like to take you to another place you went, we went, when you lived here before."

I eyed him speculatively and wondered if the battle behind his eyes would ever truly end.

"And you'll explain?" I asked. "About everything?"

"What do you include in 'everything'?" His hands were jammed deep into the pockets of his jeans, whether to keep from touching me or because of his internal struggles, I didn't know. All I knew was that the almost physical need to touch him yesterday hadn't eased in me at all, but he was keeping far enough away from me that I couldn't.

"You know, everything. The hearing, how you knew about Charlie, what you meant yesterday about my leaving being your fault," I paused, considered, and decided to add the thing I'd accepted out of hand as normal, even it wasn't. "And about your hand, and your sister's now that I think about it. About why they feel like you just pulled them out of the freezer."

"As best I can," he promised in a low whisper. "You eat, then we'll go," he suggested, pointing that the remains of the cereal box.

I shook my head. I could no more force food down my throat now than I could take wing and fly. With the prospect of more time with Edward, more time that would help me understand and maybe open more doors, there was no physical need strong enough to override that.

"I'm not really hungry," I said, already heading towards the front door to grab my coat.

"Bella. You're h-," he paused, "you need to eat."

I glared at him, or tried to, then darted back into the kitchen for a granola bar. I waved it at him and headed straight out the front door.

My feet nearly skidded to a stop when I saw a silver Volvo parked out in front of Charlie's house.

The same silver Volvo that had blared its horn at Alice when we'd met a few days ago. I whirled on him.

"It was you? At the school the other day when Alice and I were talking? You were the one that called her and drove her away?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

He sighed. "I thought it best at the time, Bella."

I was angry now. "Best? How? Why? Keeping me in the dark, away from you? You knew I was back, then. Knew I was here. But you stayed away, tried to keep Alice away? I…. Edward, I don't understand."

"I know, and I know how you hate double standards or any type of unanswered questions, but this isn't the best place to answer those questions," he said, his eyes darting around the other houses surrounding Charlie's. "So if you can trust me enough to come with me, I'll answer everything when we get there."

I was taken aback. "Of course, I trust you," I answered without pausing to consider the contradiction of my questions just seconds ago with this statement. I just knew it was true.

"You really shouldn't," he said, again with the grim tone of earlier. "But you didn't listen to me before; I suppose it's not so unusual that you won't now."

I stared at his wry smile for a moment, confused, then stepped past him and walked to the passenger side of the Volvo and got in. He stared after me, blinking a few times, before shaking his head and joining me inside the car.

We were quiet on the drive up through the highway, overhanging trees crowding us on either side. It was almost claustrophobic. The silence between us in the car didn't help that feeling at all. I could see his hands clench and unclench on the steering wheel, watch as his mouth move soundlessly, and wondered what could possibly be so horrible that we had to drive to the middle of nowhere for him to tell me about it.

When he finally ended the silent treatment, we were standing in front of his car at the head of a trail leading into the woods.

My brow was still creased when I looked up at him. "We...went hiking?" I said dubiously, staring suspiciously into the trees. "I might have big blank spots, Edward, but I'm pretty sure I'm not the outdoors type."

I'd felt so comfortable in his presence up until now, the fear I felt standing there with the trees surrounding us felt anathema. At the same time, it was there and it was very real. I wasn't a hiker, or anything outdoors at all. My favorite place was somewhere warm, and dry, with a book in my hands usually.

To my complete and utter surprise, he burst out laughing. It was the first sound he'd made since leaving the house and the sound filled the area around us, but it didn't quiet alleviate the shimmer of fear still running down my back.

"No, Bella. If there's one thing you're not, it's the outdoor sort," he managed when the laughing subsided. "I don't know if there's ever been a more complete understatement than that. If there has, I've certainly not heard it. Yes, we came here but we didn't hike, not exactly. But it's somewhere we went once, when we needed to talk away from others."

"And this, what you need to tell me, needs to be said with nothing but the trees to hear us?"

"Yes, something like that." All the laughter was gone from his face now, any trace of humor vanished. I watched the torment again, watched as it moved over his face, watched his lips move with words I couldn't hear. Apparently, the war inside his head was back on again in full force.

"Walk with me?"

I took his hand without questioning, without pause, and let him lead me through the tangle of forest around us. We walked for a long time, quiet but for the sounds of the forest around us. Once again I saw his mouth moving soundlessly, only the occasional hum or hiss reaching my ears.

"Edward, what is it?" I asked at last. "What are you keeping from me?"

He cocked his head to the side. "What makes you think I'm keeping things from you, Bella?"

I snorted out a laugh. "Oh, I don't know, everything? Your being incredibly cryptic for one, and you keep talking but I can't hear what you're saying except for these odd little hisses. It's driving me crazier than I already am," I ended with a teasing smile.

"I'm trying, Bella. I'm trying so hard to find the way to say what needs to be said, but it's not the easiest thing to phrase. There's just no simple way. God," he said on a sigh, raising a hand to run it through his already disheveled bronze hair. "It was easier last time, if such a thing could ever be easy. There I was, fully prepared to keep you from ever knowing, and without warning you announce that you'd already figured it out. All I had to do was fill in the gaps."

Sensing that any word I spoke would break through his monologue, I kept quiet and listened. What was he talking about, though? Figured _what_ out?

"And now, to be facing the words I know will…I can't find a way to," he stopped and turned to face me.

His hands came up and framed my face, thumbs brushing so gently along my cheekbones that I barely felt it. His cool, sweet breath moved across my face and stunned me into utter immobility.

"You've noticed, I'm sure, that there are things about me, and my sister and father that are different from anyone else. You picked up on those things right away the first time, but you never recoiled away as so many of the others do. You kept right on after me, breaking holes in my defenses until you were so securely inside them I knew I'd never be able to let you go."

"I don't want you to let me go," I whispered, but he stopped me from further speech by placing both thumbs over my lips. The intimacy of the touch nearly had my knees buckling again.

Then he leaned closer and I knew my legs were going to give out. "I just…just once more…before…." With each word he'd moved nearer until the last word was spoken against my lips. The sorrow in his voice had me wanting to comfort him, but then his lips were on mine and my mind went utterly, blissfully blank.

Had he kissed me before? Could I have forgotten this? It didn't seem possible. His lips moved gently across mine. Gently, but with an edge – a sharp, almost desperate edge. There was memory here, too. Another nebulous flicker danced just outside my conscious mind – a flicker wrapped around this almost desperate kiss.

His hand slid from my cheek to bury in my hair, fingers tangling, holding me to him. I responded in kind, moving closer, my arms wrapping around his waist.

And then he was gone.

I took a moment to collect myself, to straighten out my kiss-scrambled brain, to try and remember how to breathe. Eventually, though I was dizzy by then, I managed to get air moving in my lungs again.

"That was—" I started, but Edward cut me off.

"I'm a vampire, Bella."

I had to take another second, another minute. I knew I must look comical, blinking owlishly up at him, but I'd lost the ability to speak clearly. How could I when I'd only barely remembered how to breathe?

"You're…pardon?"

"The reasons behind all of your questions? They come down to one answer. We're vampires, all of us. Alice, Carlisle, the others in my family that you still don't remember."

I shook my head, disbelief flooding through me. Why was he doing this? Why was he tossing out such an unbelievable lie? I knew the probable answer to that one. What else could it be? Hurt peaked in me, wiping away the last effects of his kiss from my mind. Thankfully, when I spoke, my voice sounded more angry than injured.

"What is this," I said, my voice trembling, "some sort of sick joke?"

"Joke?" he asked, his voice incredulous.

"Yeah, joke. Of the 'let's take Bella out to the middle of nowhere and freak her out' variety. If you think you're the first to pull a prank on me, you're sorely mistaken."

"A prank?" He spit out the word, his shouldered tightening. Then resignation replaced disbelief on his face. "You're freaked out."

"Wouldn't you be? Be serious, Edward. Vampires? That's for fiction, for Hollywood, not real life. Besides, it's not only daytime, but the sun is actually out for a change. Or it is somewhere above the trees," I commented, pointing to a few pinpricks of light on the forest floor around us. "I might not be the world's authority on that sort of thing, but I know the basics."

"Hollywood doesn't get much right," he said. His voice sounded hollow, almost dead.

I realized then that whatever reason he had for throwing out that impossible idea, he wasn't teasing me. No one could feign the depths of the pain I saw on his face.

"Edward please," I said and, needing to comfort him, I placed my hand on his chest. "Just tell me what's..." My words trailed off when my brain caught up with my senses.

His shirt was thin, just a white button-down shirt tucked into khakis. But something was wrong. Very wrong with what I was feeling beneath my hand.

I froze. I felt nothing but the texture of his shirt beneath my fingers. The texture and the cool, granite hardness of his chest. A chest that didn't appear to rise and fall like mine was; a chest with no answering thrum of a pulse beneath it.

Before I could finish processing that, a slight breeze shifted the treetops overhead and a single shaft of sunlight broke through the green canopy overhead. That one sunbeam warmed the skin of my right hand and illuminated my scar. Instantly, we were surrounded by the light thrown from that scar.

Something about that sparkling light was wrong, though. There was too much of it, for one thing. The prisms that came from my scar weren't usually this numerous. Confused, I raised my eyes.

And I understood.

The sunbeam that set off my scar's glitter set off the same across Edward's face, across the small V of his chest visible under his shirt.

Edward's face, his skin…they were just like my scar.

Cold. Reflective.

My eyes fell from his beautiful face to the scar that had calmed me so much in the past year – the scar I stroked to ease the panic when it welled.

The scar, my crescent shaped scar. When I'd looked at it, I'd always seen it upside down. But placed as it was now, flat against his unmoving chest and mere inches from his face, I could see a symmetry I hadn't thought of before. The crescent was in the exact shape of a mouth.

It wasn't just a scar. It was a bite mark.

I gasped, drawing in three breaths in quick succession as one door in my mind burst painfully open and the memory assaulted me so badly I had to close my eyes against the pain.

Edward's mouth covering my scar. I could see his determined face in my memory, see his lips against my skin, feel the coolness of them against the pain radiating through me.

And then pain. So much it was blinding me. My hand burning, beyond all bearing, while the pain took over my every thought.

 _You must do it now._

"Bella…?" The whispered question barely reached me. I took a step backwards.

"No," I said softly, taking another step away. My scarred hand came up to cover my mouth.

The image was there, just as the others had been. So clear I knew it immediately as a memory, a true one. A headache, sudden and blinding, sprung up behind my eyes. I winced and closed them, trying to block the pain so I could think.

Panic, or was it shock? Whichever, it was stronger than anything I'd ever felt before. It bubbled up inside me and sent my entire body into tremors I could barely control. On unsteady feet, I took another step backwards, then another, needing distance. I needed time. To think, to breathe, to get away from the near blinding pain.

Why had he stayed away? Why had he kept Alice away?

Why did he look like his whole world was spiraling into the same despair that was engulfing me with every step I took?

"No," I said softly.

I didn't know what I was denying, the pain, the memory or the believability of that memory? It could have been any number of things, or all of them. All I knew was that I had to get away from here. I had to leave; I had to think, before it shook me to pieces, before my head split in two.

I turned then and ran as fast as I could without looking back, because if I looked back, I'd never be able to leave.

Interlude - Edward

I watched her go. What more could I do? I'd finally gotten my wish, after all. Bella, running and screaming. All right, so she hadn't screamed, but the constant call of "No" was close enough. For the first time, I'd correctly guessed Bella's reaction to something.

Ironically, it was the one time I'd hoped that I was wrong. A miniscule hope to be certain, but it was there. The ever-present ache in my chest now that even that small hope was gone gave evidence enough of its existence.

It took a long time before she was far enough away for the sound of her retreat to fade. There were also several soft thuds when her feet tripped her up. Thankfully, there had been no repeat of her voice crying out 'No'. Nor had there been any tears. I don't think any resolve could have kept me from following her then. Even her occasional tumbles were making it difficult for me to remain behind.

An insistent buzzing against my thigh broke into my thoughts. I looked at the display and sighed.

"Nicely done, Edward," Alice shrilled into my ear. "You could have handled that a little better, you know. I _told_ you that you needed to ease into it, didn't I? But no, Edward Cullen, Master of Finesse, has to blurt it straight out. And you accused _me_ of not having any tact."

She paused and I heard her sigh. "For God's sake, you couldn't have made it any more of a shock if you'd pulled out a cape and flashed a set of fangs at her."

"Alice...," I growled.

"Yeah, yeah. Whatever. We'll talk later. I left the house as soon as I saw her take off and I'll be with her in a few minutes. Go back to the house, Edward. I'll take care of this. I'll get her home."

"What do you mean, 'take care of this'? Alice, she's…,"

I stopped talking when I realized that I was speaking to dead air. Alice had already hung up.

I was almost worried enough to follow Bella's scent to wherever she'd gone. Not to interfere, but to listen. To make sure Alice wasn't making it worse with her amazing ability to barrel through obstacles to get what she wanted. Finesse wasn't exactly Alice's strong suit, either.

Instead I stared at the place she'd been for a second more before turning and running back to the car. Whatever Bella was going through, whatever her silent mind had been thinking when she'd looked in stunned disbelief at my glittering face, it was powerful enough to have her running away from me.

I would abide by her decision.


	7. Chapter 7

After the fourth time I fell down, I stopped running. It was cold and wet and I landed in a pile of decaying leaves, but I was beyond caring. Beyond much of anything, really. I was down, and staying down. My world had narrowed down to several undeniable truths in just one conversation. Edward Cullen said he was a vampire; he might or might not be responsible for my flight from Forks and the subsequent injuries/hospital stay; and I was feeling a pull from the depths of my soul to get up off the forest floor and run back to him as fast as I could.

Irrational. There was no other word for it, except maybe insanity. Insanity worked nicely, too.

I worked on steadying my breathing, calming my heart rate. I had to _think_ , but I wasn't having much luck. It was impossible to think around the lingering pain from my sudden headache coupled with the emotions pressing on me from all sides. So I sat, dragging in deep breaths and touching the scar on my hand. Touching it, and staring at it, trying as I'd never tried before to force the doors in my mind open. They wouldn't budge - my past was as much a mystery as it had been since I awakened in Phoenix.

Since I'd awakened in Phoenix...

Something came to me then as I sat, cold and shaking, on the forest floor. This wasn't a lost memory, not a door unlocking. This was something I remembered from the hospital. From _after_ the accident that had stolen so much from me. It was a frozen moment in time, one second, one heartbeat. I saw a pale, beautiful boy standing in my hospital room. He was still as a statue and staring at me with concern and relief as I took inventory of the aches and pains radiating over my body. A velvet voice speaking to me, the first sounds I'd heard besides the beeping of the monitors.

Edward. It had been Edward in my room. I'd stared at him like he was some stranger off the street...and then he was gone. In the blink of my eyes, he'd vanished like an apparition.

Because I hadn't known him.

"Edward," I said aloud, my voice breaking into a sob and my hands rising to cover my face.

"Bella?"

I didn't move, didn't react, because it wasn't the voice I wanted to hear. Close, but not close enough. Still, though, I knew it.

"Hi, Alice."

She dropped onto the ground next to me but far enough away that we weren't touching at all. We didn't speak, Alice just sat with me while I tried to work out the confusing thoughts battling around the headache that was still lingering around the edges of my awareness.

"We were friends too, weren't we?" I said, finally breaking the silence.

"Yes, we were," Alice answered after a moment. "We were going to be best friends."

I lifted my head to look at her. "What do you mean 'going to be'?"

"It's complicated, but I can see things, Bella. Things that will happen, and I saw us as best friends. Before...," she trailed off, but she didn't need to finish. I knew what she meant.

"Before the accident," I stated blankly. She merely nodded in response.

I returned my eyes to my hands, fingers twisting and untwisting, the scar going pale white against the surrounding skin when my hands clenched. My index finger followed the line of the crescent and I raised streaming eyes to Alice's.

"Edward didn't do this."

There was a soft intake of breath, Alice's only reaction. Her face was still utterly blank. "You remembered?" She sounded dubious.

"Not what happened, no. I just know it here," I said softly, raising my scarred hand to rest against my beating heart. "He wouldn't hurt me. Whatever I saw, whatever happened, it wasn't him."

"What you saw?"

I nodded. "When we were talking just now, Edward and I." I had to stop. Even saying his name was a painful reminder of the look on his face right before I'd fled from him. "When he told me about…," I waved a hand, unable to say the words.

Alice came to my rescue. "Told you about our family," she supplied and one pale, cold hand broke the distance and covered mine. "You can say it, you know. It's not like I don't know I'm a vampire."

I couldn't help but flinch. Not from her cold skin, but from the calm, almost casual confirmation of what I'd denied as a prank earlier. Had she always been this cavalier about it? Had I ever been?

I didn't know, but I there was no fear in me, sitting here with Alice.

I stared at our hands for a long time. While her hand was as ice cold as ever, but I didn't notice because there was warmth there, too. The warmth of the friendship that had been cut short but, I hoped, could be recovered and renewed. When our eyes met, when I saw the smile in her amber eyes, I thought maybe it could.

"Yes," I said when I found my voice again. "I saw something earlier, a memory. When I saw my scar glitter, saw it at the same time Edward's face did the same thing, I remembered…something. An image. An image of Edward's mouth here," I touched the scar, "his mouth…and pain. Like I've never felt before."

"Then how do you know, if you only saw that one moment?"

"I just do," I said firmly. "It wasn't him."

There was a secret sort of smile on Alice's face, almost satisfaction, and I knew I was right regardless of what I'd seen in that brief instant. "You might want to let him know that," she said easily, "before he can continue to castigate himself over chasing you off."

My mouth gaped open. "What?"

"Part of his dubious charm," she smiled, "an overactive sense of personal guilt with a side order of angst. It's annoying," she sighed dramatically, "but we've all learned to live with it. And mostly love him anyway."

"But…I just needed…It was too much. I just needed time to think, to process it all somehow. Not that I've gotten very far. And then my head started to pound, like it was being split in two and I couldn't… I didn't mean for… Crap, I've got to go back to him, to explain…Alice, can you…I don't know where...?"

My head whipped around to look behind me; my eyes trying to find the path I'd taken to get here.

But Alice was already on her feet with one hand held out a hand to me. "Of course, Bella," she said with a smile. "Come on, let's get you home."

I was confused when we walked in a different direction from the one I thought I'd followed to get here, but with my pitiful sense of direction, I didn't question it either. My mind was too occupied with what I was going to say to Edward for anything more complicated than putting one foot in front of the other.

We walked for a while in silence while my own personal guilt threaded through my mental attempts to apologize. Each and every one sounded utterly pathetic, even to my own ears. Frustration was starting to eat at me with every failed attempt to explain myself until I groaned out loud with it.

"Can't you just tell me, Alice? Tell me all of it, everything that happened?"

Alice sighed. "I can, Bella, if you want me to. But it would be no different than me telling you a story. You wouldn't know fact from fiction," she paused and held up a hand to stop me before I could interrupt. "Of course, you know I won't lie to you or make things up, but it would mean so much more to you if they came from your own memory, not from mine."

Frustrated as I was, I knew she was right. I wouldn't be satisfied until I had _my_ memories back. Just knowing what had happened wasn't enough. I wanted it all.

I only vaguely heard the things she was chattering at me while we walked and her voice tuned out entirely when we finally left the cover of the trees. I was staring at a big, beautiful white house in the middle of a clearing. The sounds of music, a piano playing softly, filtered through the lawn in front of us. The smile was on my face before I registered it.

"Claire de Lune," I said, soft awe at hearing one of my favorites played so beautifully.

"Yes. He plays it…often."

Again, Alice's voice was only registered on the periphery of my consciousness. I was already moving forward. With my mind focused on the haunting melody, I let my feet carry me forward without direction. They seemed to know just where to take me, not stopping until I was on a patio, standing in the open French doors, watching him play.

I knew the moment he registered my presence. The notes on the piano didn't falter, but his shoulders stiffened. He didn't look up, didn't stop playing; he just shook his head and continued on with the song.

"Edward?" I asked softly.

That's when the piano stopped. His head raised slowly, eyes searching out and finding mine. His voice, when he found it, was still velvet, still mesmerizing, but with a hint of disbelief in the single word. "Bella?"

"I'm sorry I ran away, Edward," I blurted out from nerves, "it was just so much, so confusing, and then your face. It glitters like my hand does and my head started pounding. Then I saw, it was another memory, of your mouth, and it was covering the scar and I know it was stupid, me running off like that, and I'm so sorry I did but—"

I had to stop then because his lips were in the way. Halfway through my babble he'd closed the distance between us, moving so fast he managed it in a single blink of my eyes. I was amazed that I'd been able to keep speaking, with him so close and the look of utter incredulity on his face, but I'd managed it.

The kiss didn't last long, or not as long as I wanted it to anyway, but it was enough to stop the endless stream of nonsense I'd been spewing out. He didn't end the kiss so much as he moved it, his lips trailing along my chin, up my jaw line. I could feel every touch of his lips like fire against my skin and had to work to keep from moaning.

"I'm going to owe Alice into the next century," he muttered against my ear.

"Alice?" I asked hazily, my breathing too erratic for coherent speech.

"Mmm," he muttered, his lips now moving back down my jaw. "How did she get you to remember?"

Though it cost me nearly every ounce of strength I possessed, I pulled away from his mind-bending kisses to look up into his face. I had to blink a few times to clear my head. "Remember what?"

"Everything, Your past, our past. Our time together."

I was still half-drugged from his kisses but my thoughts were getting a little clearer now that he'd stopped. "I haven't though, Edward. Just...just two little pieces. Nothing more than that."

Now it was his turn to look confused. "What do you mean, just two pieces? If you didn't remember, then why are you here?"

I finally caught up. With a steady hand I reached down and took his. I laced our fingers together and placed his hand over my heart. "I remember things here. Even if I don't have the memories to back them up. Yet. I can't explain it, but I know this. I know _you._ And that's enough."

His face was so heartbreakingly disbelieving that I could do nothing but bring my hands up to cup his cold cheeks and smile. "I might not remember how it happened, Edward. I don't remember the path we took to get here, but that doesn't matter. What matters is that we _are_ here. Together."

He cocked his head to the side, as if listening to something I couldn't hear. He probably was. But whatever he heard, whatever I missed, it made another small war erupt on his face. There was no despair this time, no anger. The emotions playing for dominance were closer to relief and incredulity.

"I don't. Can't understand. Bella, after what I told you, you ran away. I mean, I knew you would, but that hasn't changed. I'm still a vampire, still dangerous to you."

"I left because I needed time, Edward. Not because of what you are. One of the clearest, and most confusing things, is that I knew your kiss. Even before you told me anything, I knew your kiss, what it would feel like, what it _did_ feel like. And you said I'd figured it out before, so obviously it didn't bother me enough to keep from kissing you then, so why should it n—"

Again, my words were cut off by his mouth. This time, his arms wrapped around me as well, pulling me up off the ground until my toes were knocking into his shins. His hold on me was tight, but not unpleasantly so. If anything, my body was gripping him tighter, trying to get closer. All the while, his soft, reverent kisses covered every inch of my face.

"My Bella. My beautiful Bella," he muttered. "You're so utterly absurd, you never have the reactions you should, or that I expect. And you shouldn't be here now, shouldn't have walked casually into a house full of vampires without so much as a care in the world, but I can't bring myself to be anything but overjoyed that you did."

"I did, though," I managed when my voice came back to me.

"Did what?"

"I did have a care, Edward. I was terrified that by being such an idiot and leaving, that I'd lost you."

"Oh, love," he chuckled against my ear, "you'll never lose me. The only reason I was here and not out looking for you, to try and explain better, was because I didn't want to make as much of a disaster of it as I did the first time."

Slowly, he eased me back onto my feet, but his arms remained tight around me. As if he couldn't bear our separation any more than I could. His eyes roamed over my face, which I was positive was red and blotchy from my earlier crying. He didn't seem to notice. The look on his face was close to awe.

I blushed. Even though I knew it wouldn't help the blotchiness at all, I couldn't stop. I just blushed harder.

"What piece did you remember?" he asked me suddenly, cool fingers running along my overheated face.

"P-Pardon?" I stammered. Everything about his expression was causing all sorts of misfirings in my brain.

"You said you remembered something else, something other than the memory of your scar."

"Oh, that." Damned cheeks, I thought, would they _ever_ cool down?

But before I could tell him that I'd remembered seeing him in the hospital, however, a deep, booming voice sounded from somewhere behind him.

Edward rolled his eyes.

"Oh, she's here, all right," someone was saying and I heard the clomping of heavy footfalls grow closer to where we stood. I tensed.

"Ha!" the voice called out triumphantly when he reached us and my jaw dropped. Aside from another beautifully perfect face, the size of the guy in the doorway was nearly unreal. He was, in a word, huge. I'd seen serious bodybuilders in school, but they were nothing to the boy in the doorway. This guy exuded strength in every breath.

"Welcome back, Bella," he said as he approached me. In a blink, he'd pulled me from Edward's arms, gripped me around the waist and spun me in a circle. I'd tensed when he picked me up, unnecessarily as it turned out. Strong as he looked, he was quite gentle. "Been dead boring around here without you to liven things up."

I could feel my face go beet, blistering red when he set me down again. I staggered a little, my hands rising to cover my cheeks.

"Well, she remembers how to blush at least," he boomed out a laugh. "That's something."

My cheeks went, if possible, even redder.

"Subtle, Emmett," Edward said. I was surprised by the lighter tone to his voice and looked up in time to catch a twinkle in his topaz eyes. I couldn't help it, I grinned in return. I didn't miss that his arm slid around my waist the second I was back on my feet again. I relaxed into his side, hoping my cheeks would cool some time this century.

"Bella, this is my brother, Emmett," he said, the humor still evident in his voice.

Emmett stared at me expectantly, but then his face fell. "Well, hell. She really did lose it all, didn't she? That's just downright insulting."

I felt Edward stiffen again beside me, but there was no tension here for me. Instead, a laugh bubbled up from my chest. I did nothing to stop it. It felt good to laugh, to smile. Good. Easy. And very, very right.

"Hard to believe I could ever forget any of you," I admitted truthfully.

"Edward always did say you were too stubborn for your own good," Emmett commented. Edward hissed beside me. "Well, you did. No sense denying it. Maybe she just needs to put some of that stubborn to work at remembering rather than forgetting and it'd be all cleared up."

"Gee," Edward said sarcastically, "now why didn't I think of that? Now if you'll excuse us..."

I looked up when Edward stopped speaking, my brow contracting when his hand came up to cover his face. "Oh for the love of all that's holy," he muttered. Then he turned to me, his expression grave. "Looks like everyone's patience is at their limits," he said in my ear.

"What do you mean?" I asked, looking up at him, apprehensive.

"My family. They missed you too, Bella. They want to welcome you h- back."

My teeth latched onto my bottom lip, worrying it. Edward was one thing, but his family? My heart stuttered in my chest from sheer nerves. I was fairly sure I wasn't particularly good at the meeting-the-parents thing. I swallowed and nodded, telling myself repeatedly that I'd already met these people once and had, apparently, not made a complete idiot of myself. Not if they were all so eager to meet me again.

You did it before, I told myself, you can do it again.

"Bella?"

We all turned to the doorway and I gasped again. I was slowly growing accustomed to the beauty of the Cullen family, if anyone could ever get used to such a thing. But the ringing voice behind me, soft and unsure, stopped me cold as did the classic, vintage beauty of the woman standing beside the doctor.

"I'm Esme," she said, walking toward us slowly. "I'm sorry to intrude like this, but I couldn't stop myself once I heard your voice. Welcome back." She reached for my hands when she was close enough, taking them in hers and squeezing lightly. "It's so good to see you again, sweetheart."

The emotion in her voice confused me, but only on the surface. As it had been with the doctor, Carlisle, and Alice, and Edward – there was a connection here. One buried beyond my stubbornly closed mind, true, but it was there. It was one I knew almost soul-deep. I belonged here.

The doctor was right behind her, his hand on the small of her back. "Bella," he greeted me warmly. "We didn't have a proper reunion at the hospital," he said, then shot a look at Edward that confused me. "I'm Carlisle."

"Nice to meet you both," I said, smiling as my blush rose once more. "Again, I mean."

When I'd realized that Alice brought me to her house rather than my own, I hadn't really cared so long as I got to see Edward again. See him, and apologize for my abrupt departure in the woods. To try and explain why I'd taken off the way I had. I didn't expect this, to be surrounded by his family.

I should have felt nervous, or at the very least uneasy. I mean, I was surrounded by vampires. From every logical source my fractured mind had access to, this should be a very bad thing. But I didn't, and it wasn't. This felt more like a homecoming.

I looked up then and saw that two others had joined us as well. Two blondes. One was the sort of traffic-stopping, drop-dead gorgeous you never believed existed outside of Photoshop; the other was just as handsome, but in a more rugged and reserved way.

Edward introduced them as Rosalie and Jasper.

They kept their distance from me, however. And that wasn't surprising either. Nor unwelcome, at least in the girl's case. Rosalie, standing close beside a still grinning Emmett, looked at me like I was something she'd stepped in while wearing a favorite pair of shoes and Jasper…I wasn't sure about Jasper. But he stayed close to Alice, I stayed at Edward's side, and everyone seemed comfortable with that.

"We'll leave you two now. We didn't intend to intrude, just to welcome you back," Carlisle said when the conversation of re-acquaintance ebbed. His eyes darted to each of his children in turn as if daring them to question him. None did. They all started to drift away with smiles and promises to see me again soon.

Emmett darted forward and ruffled my hair. "Don't do anything funny unless I'm around," he requested.

"Funny?" I asked.

"You know. Trip down the stairs, get your own feet tangled up and hit the deck? The usual." He paused, regarding me closely. True to form, my face went up in flames. "There it is again. I'm a master at this."

Edward made a sound that had me jumping at his side, but Emmett merely laughed and let Rosalie and Esme drag him from the room.

I turned back to Edward and frowned, surprised to see him staring at Carlisle. Their eyes didn't leave one another's and every now and then, Edward's head would move slightly. If I didn't know better, I'd have sworn they were having a conversation. I raised my confused eyes to Edward's, but he merely squeezed my middle in response and shook his head.

He was just turning back to me when his eyes rolled and he stared at a point just over my right shoulder. I tried to turn to see the cause of his look, but his arms were around me again and moving wasn't an option.

"You _could_ tone down the smug, Alice."

"I tried that once," she trilled back, "it didn't work out." The pleasure in her voice was unmistakable, even if I couldn't see her face.

"By the way," he added, though his eyes were on mine now. "I thought you said you were going to take her home," Edward commented.

"I did take her home," she replied, "I just didn't tell you which one."

Her bell-like laugh followed her upstairs, the only indication that she'd moved away from where we stood.

I giggled and Edward's eyes were on mine again. "What?" he asked, his voice a whisper.

"Nothing. It's just what Alice said, that's what this felt like. Like a homecoming, almost."

If Edward thought that Alice had been overly smug, I doubted her expression could have held a candle to the one on his face right now. Smug, satisfied, and..happy. The wide smile was enough to have my knees threatening to give way again.

"You're really all right with all of this," he said in the same low tone.

"All of what?"

"This. Me, my family. What we are."

My brow puckered. "Why wouldn't I be? I'll grant it's more than a little unsettling to be surrounded by seven of the most beautiful people I've ever seen outside of _GQ_ and _Vogue_."

Edward stopped me with a look. "That's not what I meant, Bella."

"Oh, you meant the whole...," I broke off and waved a hand towards him, "thing?"

"Yes, that whole thing. Say it, Bella," his voice had dropped to a silken, pained whisper.

I had to take a breath, steady myself so the word would come out clear and not betray any of the unease I'd felt under the surface of my Cullen homecoming. Because he was right; if I couldn't say it, then I had no reason staying here. It didn't help that he was staring at me as if he expected me to run off again. And if my unease over meeting his family showed in my voice, he'd probably take it the wrong way.

It was a test, and I was determined to pass it.

"Vampires." I exhaled the word more than actually speaking it, and felt myself relaxing into his side. Even better, I felt him relax right along with me.

With his arm still around me, Edward leaned in and took my mouth in another slow, soft kiss. His cool, glass lips caressed mine. His mouth swallowed my moan of happiness when his tongue darted out to slide against my lower lip. I wondered, with the part of my brain still capable of thinking, how I had ever spent any time not kissing Edward? Even with my racing heart and weakening knees, it felt like time wasted.

Edward pulled back when he felt me sag under my growing dizziness. His crooked smile did nothing to strengthen my ability to stand upright. There was a soft pinging sound from somewhere close by, a clock chiming the hour. As I stared into Edward's hypnotic eyes, already raising on my toes to kiss him again, the chiming ended after seven peals.

Seven o'clock. That's when reality crashed back in on me.

"Oh crap. Charlie!"

Edward raised one perfect eyebrow at me. "Should I be worried that kissing me reminds you of your father?"

I gaped for a minute, trying to connect the two thoughts in my head and then laughed when he smiled his crooked smile at me. "It doesn't. It's just...I didn't leave a note or anything when we left this morning."

Had it really only been this morning that Edward had shown up at my door? It seemed like much, much longer to me. Closer to a lifetime.

"I see," Edward nodded, only half of his smile remaining on his face. "I'll take you home."

"No!" The protest was out of my mouth before I could stop it. My arms tightened around him out of pure reflex. "I don't want...there's so much I never got to say, to explain..."

For some reason, his smile returned full force, along with a gleam in his beautiful, topaz eyes. "Don't worry, Bella."

"But...," I protested again. I couldn't explain the frisson of unease that shivered down my spine at the thought of leaving here, of letting this day end.

His finger on my lips silenced me and when he leaned down to kiss the tip of my nose, and I lost the ability to think, much less protest.

"It's all right, love. You'll see."


	8. Chapter 8

_Interlude ~ Edward_

I dropped Bella off in front of Charlie's and it felt like parts of me were being ripped off while I watched her walk up those few steps to the house. I wanted to follow, to attach myself to her side and stay there. Forever.

If the looks she cast back at me were any indication, I was not alone in feeling that. The idea both thrilled and unnerved me. Because of that, I forced myself to put the car in gear and release the brake.

As I pulled away, my earlier conversation with Carlisle rang back through my mind and I frowned. I didn't want to think about that now. I didn't want to think about it ever. The purpose behind his theories was moot anyway; it would never be an issue.

I wanted to stay and eavesdrop on her conversation with Charlie. I wanted to hear what she would tell him, but I had to get the car back home. I'd managed to not have the neighbors informing Charlie that a Volvo was stalking their house last year, I wanted to keep it that way.

It took no time at all to drive back to the house and park the car in the garage. Alice was, of course, waiting for me. I could tell just by looking that her smug hadn't cooled a degree in my absence.

I sighed.

"How do you fit all that superiority into such a small body?"

"It's a gift," she grinned back at me, popping up off the steps and nearly bouncing her way towards me. "When is she coming back?"

I rolled my eyes. "Alice, there are still many things left to work out. Not the least of which is that she still has no sense of self-preservation."

Alice's small hand raised and she smacked herself on the forehead. I was surprised; I'd expected her to smack me. "When are you going to just accept that she belongs here, with us? With _you_? For God's sake, Edward, I _told_ you. She was already on her way back to you when I found her. If I'd been two minutes later, I would've had to track her down in the forest."

"I know that," I said, running one hand through already tousled hair. "Doesn't mean I understand it."

This time, Alice sighed. She was standing right in front of me and had to go up onto her toes to touch my cheek. "Some things you just have to take on faith, Edward."

I tried to smile back, but I was fairly sure it was a dismal failure.

For some unknown reason, she took pity on me and dropped the subject. Not without an eyeroll or two, of course. "Charlie will be asleep in three hours," she announced when she turned to head back into the house. "Will you make it that long?"

I glared at her, even added in a growl for good measure. For all the notice she paid, I might as well have stayed silent. Alice just trilled a laugh at me and bounced away.

Three hours.

After the year of torture I'd survived during her absence, three hours should feel like nothing.

But it felt like forever.

I stared at my reflection in the small bathroom mirror for a long time after I'd finished getting ready for bed. I don't know why I expected to look different, but I checked anyway. All I saw was the same pale complexion, the same dark brown eyes.

Was there a difference? Maybe. At least, I didn't remember breaking into foolish, ear-to-ear grins for no reason before today. Or random laughter, either. But before I looked away from the mirror, I'd done both.

I heard Charlie snoring in his bedroom and padded softly down the short bit of hallway to my room. I wasn't in any hurry to get there as I knew sleep was going to be as difficult for me to find as my still missing memories.

I started to wish I'd brought a few more books with me and wondered idly which might still be here. Cheered that I might have left something good behind, I pushed open the door and had to work to keep from gasping loud enough to wake Charlie.

Edward was standing in the far corner of my room.

"Edward," I hissed, darting into my room and closing the door softly behind me. "What...how did you get in here?" Despite the questions, I was having a very hard time not leaping my bed to get closer to him, to bury myself in his arms.

"The window," he said simply, but there was something in his eyes, an almost probing look. "I just thought... If you're uncomfortable, I can go," he added, waving a hand at the open window.

"No!" I spoke too loudly. Instinctively, I froze and listened for the sounds of Charlie stirring in his room. Thankfully, there was nothing but a continuation of the soft snores drifting down the hallway.

I took a slow step forward, my arms hanging at my sides in spite of the inner urge to reach out for him. "No, it's fine. Of course it's fine. I was just a little surprised."

Edward was watching me closely, his now-familiar half-smirk covering turning the corners of his mouth. "You were the first time, too," he said softly.

"The first time? You...you do this a lot? Sneak into girls' bedrooms?"

"Not just any girl's, Bella," he said softly. "Just yours."

There was a strange fluttering in my stomach. Nerves and...uncertainty. Edward had been here with me? In my bedroom? What had we... _had_ we? Was it possible that I'd forgotten not only my first love, but my first lover as well? Unbidden, heat rose to my cheeks again and I brought my hands up to cover them.

"I wish you wouldn't do that," he said softly, walking towards me.

"D-Do what?" I stammered. My heart was pounding a very unnatural rhythm in my chest.

"Cover your beautiful blush," he commented. He was in front of me now, his hands on mine and pulling them from my face. "I've missed it."

"H-Habit," I managed through the frenetic pounding beneath my ribs, utterly unable to calm either it or my trembling voice.

His head cocked to the side as he regarded me. "Bella? What is it?" His cool hand was cupping my face now, his expression concerned. "Your heart is flying."

"You can hear that?"

He smiled, just a little. "Yes, Bella. I can hear that, considering it's much closer than a box of Cheerios, and much more significant to me."

I'd opened my mouth to ask how, but he forestalled me. Somehow, he seemed to know my question before I asked it. "First tell me why it's racing."

Naturally, I blushed again. "I...I don't think I'm ready for this, Edward. I mean, I remember a few things, but..."

Now he looked confused. "Ready for what?"

My traitorous eyes darted to the bed then back to his face before I had to look away. There were a number of images racing through my head, images that made my blush, if possible, more pronounced. I remembered his kisses from earlier and my mind superimposed those onto memories of movies I'd seen – all frantic hands and writhing bodies. They didn't have the feel of true memories, but I couldn't be sure. And if he stayed here...often? I swallowed hard and focused on a button on his shirt as if it held the mysteries of the universe. They flashed back to his face when he chuckled.

"It's nothing like that," he said and there was no laughter in his voice. "I like to watch you sleep," he said finally, his thumb brushing over my cheekbone.

"That sounds incredibly boring," I commented when I'd relaxed enough to find my voice again. For some reason, the movie images were more difficult to banish, but I tried.

"Not at all. You talk in your sleep. It can be quite illuminating."

I knew I talked in my sleep, Renee and Phil teased me about it often. I'd even asked them, in the deepest of my frustration in Jacksonville, if I'd ever said anything about Forks. Of course, I hadn't. Just mindless babble about my day, Renee said.

"And Charlie? He's...okay with this?"

Edward laughed again. "I doubt that. In fact, I'm fairly sure he'd brick up the window if he knew I came here at night. Charlie's a sound sleeper."

My pulse rate relaxed slightly, or as much as it ever did when Edward was so close to me. Or touching me. Or looking like he was about to kiss me again.

"You never did answer my question," Edward said, breaking the silence.

I racked my brain. Question? I had about a million of them for him, questions I needed answers to, but couldn't for the life of me remember anything he'd asked me that I hadn't answered.

He must have picked up on the confusion on my face because he clarified at once. "You said you'd remembered two things. One centered around this," he said, taking my right hand in his and stroking his finger against the crescent shape. "I was curious about what the other one was."

"Oh, that."

"Yes, that. What did you remember?"

"Just a small thing, and it doesn't even count as a memory. Not a door opening, anyway. It was something I'd thought was a hallucination at the time, when I woke up in Phoenix. I remembered you, Edward. You were there, waiting for me to wake up and I asked who you were." I had to stop there and clear the emotion from my throat. "And then you were gone."

He was quiet when I finished; quiet and very still. As I watched him, my mind went back to that time in the hospital, went over what I knew and what I was slowly piecing together, even without the accompanying memories.

I gasped when one connection formed, one I'd never thought of as significant until now. Until I had met his family.

"The doctor," I said, answering Edward's puzzled look. "Your father, Carlisle. He was the doctor who found me in the hotel corridor, the one who stitched me up and got me to the hospital." I spoke with conviction, knowing this was right rather than asking if it was.

Edward closed his eyes and muttered something I couldn't hear.

"Edward?"

"Yes, Bella. Carlisle was there. He fixed the gash in your head."

We were sitting on the bed now, facing each other, so I reached out to take his hand in mine, our fingers twining automatically. He seemed almost reluctant. Then one long finger touched my scar and the memory that had me running flashed back in my mind. The memory that made no sense without any context.

"Why did I leave Forks, Edward?"

My question was a whisper, almost too low for me to hear, but I knew he heard me. His entire body went rigid, something I was beginning to realize came from stress or indecision.

"Please," I said in the same low tone. "Please, I need to know."

"I wish you didn't," he said at last.

"Why? I know this wasn't your fault," I explained, indicating the scar, "I know you didn't do this."

"But I did, Bella. And it was. It was entirely my fault."

I remembered what Alice had said about Edward in the forest, heavy doses of personal guilt and angst. Was this more of the same, or was it true? Were my convictions more what I _wanted_ to be true rather than what _was_ true?

"My world is a dangerous place," he said at last, "even more so for you. My kind...we don't associate with humans much outside of," he paused, reluctant, "the obvious. But our family is different. We have more compassion for human life, a conscience as it were, and we've learned to tame our thirst with the blood of animals rather than humans.

"If we followed the same pattern as our brethren, Bella, you'd never had made it out of my house alive."

I shuddered at his harsh words, an unwanted trail of fear sliding down my spine at the look on his face. Did I remember this, somewhere deep within me that my conscious mind hadn't yet touched? I must, because I'd walked into that house with no more intent than seeing Edward again, apologizing to him. I'd sat with Alice in the forest, knowing what she was, and felt nothing but comfort and friendship. There had been no fear there.

 _Vegetarian_. The word echoed through my mind and I knew it as another memory. It was a joke, a play on words. It was how Edward's family referred to themselves. The only physical indication of this recovered memory was a soft gasp, but Edward didn't seem to notice. As he was still intent on his story, and giving me much needed answers, I didn't stop him to tell him what I'd remembered. There would be time for that later.

"But we are the rarity in our world, Bella, far from the norm. Most look at us with shrugs and confusion, unable to grasp why we would abandon our nature for a life of sacrifice. They're perfectly content in living their lives in accordance with the basics of vampire canon.

"And sometimes, they come across us, and they're curious. We're not social creatures, most choose to wander alone, or in pairs. Very rarely, in groups of three. One trio found us, when I'd taken you out with us to play baseball."

"Baseball?" I asked, thoroughly confused and even a bit amused. Edward's expression silenced me. I supposed we'd get to that later, too.

"One member of this group, James," he said the name with such hatred, I actually flinched. "At first, he didn't seem to notice anything off about us, but then he realized you were human. We defended you, naturally, and that set him off. His idea of fun is tracking humans, stalking them, drawing out the kill for his own enjoyment. And when we defended, you became his next target."

My hand tightened on his, able to follow the logical course of his story. "So I left Forks to try and get away from this James."

Edward seemed to have run out of words and the silence stretched between us. It was, at the very least, an answer to the biggest question that had plagued me for the better part of a year. I knew why I'd left Forks now, knew the secret I'd been keeping without knowing what the secret had been. Of course I'd left Forks in secret, I highly doubted I could have calmly announced to Charlie that I was leaving to escape a deranged vampire.

"James did this," I said at last. I didn't need to specify the scar because Edward's fingers were still touching it. "He bit me."

As soon as the words were out, my brow furrowed. I could understand that Edward's family wasn't the norm for vampires, that some assumptions I'd had before today were just Hollywood versions of the myth. But what about bites? Was that a Hollywood myth too?

"Doesn't that mean I should be like you now?" I asked softly, searching for his golden eyes with my own.

"That's the other memory you had, Bella. When we found you, James had already...the change was happening. I was able to clear your wound and reverse it. To clean your system of his venom."

"Venom?"

He smiled, but it went nowhere near his eyes. His expression was too pained for that. "That's how new vampires are made. Our teeth are coated with it, our mouths fill with it when we feed. Once you're bitten, the venom starts to spread through the blood, changing the body as it goes. It's horrendously painful."

I remembered that well enough, the memory still fresh from when it hit me in the forest earlier. I shivered slightly. His hands tightened on mine.

"And you were able to draw it back out like, what, poison from a rattlesnake bite?"

"Something like that, yes."

I could tell he was uncomfortable. His entire demeanor practically screamed it.

"Why did you?"

He couldn't have looked more astonished if I'd suddenly grown a second head and started speaking in tongues.

"What?"

"Why did you stop me from changing? I mean, if we were...together then, why not just let me truly be with you?"

"Did you hear what I said, Bella? We're monsters, in the truest sense of the word. We kill to survive. Even my family, we still struggle with what we are, with staying true to our consciences to keep from killing humans. Every day is a battle, a decision. You don't want this," he paused, just for a moment, "you can't ever..."

Another thought occurred to me then. One that made me drop my eyes from his to focus instead on our joined hands. He wouldn't want me to change, to be stuck with me forever. Not if, well, if the feelings I was just starting to understand weren't reciprocated… I felt an overpowering need to pull my hand away. "Oh," I said softly.

His free hand touched under my chin, forcing my glistening eyes to meet his. "What?"

"It's nothing, Edward. I just…I understand. Of course, you wouldn't want me changed." My heart broke a little when I said it, when his shoulders relaxed and the concern leeched from his face. "It wasn't like that for you."

"Wasn't like…what?"

"You stayed away, kept Alice away, when I first came back. Then… You left me in Phoenix, didn't come back when you realized that my memories were gone. Probably a bit of a relief, too. Not having to find a way to break it off or anyth—"

I didn't get a chance to finish because Edward's body was pressing mine into the mattress, his hands were cupping my cheeks and his lips were gentle on mine. Gentle, but with something so fierce behind it, I felt the kiss all the way to my toes. I felt him along every inch of me he covered. He kissed me until I was gasping for breath, until we both were, then rested his forehead softly against mine.

"Ah, Bella. My silly, insecure girl," he murmured against my cheek, "leaving Phoenix without you was, quite possibly, the most painful thing I've ever experienced in my very long life. If I recall correctly, Carlisle and Alice both had to restrain me, in one of the weaker moments, from simply snatching you out of that hospital bed and running you straight back here myself."

"Then why…"

He silenced me with another kiss, softer and less urgent this time. "Your doctors were certain that any attempt to force the memories back, reminders of what you'd blocked out, would only serve as a detriment to your recovery. That it would injure you more, drive your mind deeper into itself. Carlisle didn't agree, but your mother did. In the end, we all had to bow to those wishes. Even Charlie. Though it just about did us all in."

My mind wanted to reject what I was hearing. After all, it made no sense. I was just me, just Bella Swan, eternal wallflower and he was…well, so much more than that. But as I stared into the burning topaz eyes staring into mine with such ferocity, there was no way I could doubt his words. No way I could doubt the soft, almost reverent caresses to my face and hair, the body pressing into mine, the…oh! Instantly my cheeks went bright, blazing red. Edward seemed to understand my reaction and was away from me in a blink of my human eyes.

Embarrassing and arousing as it was, the feel of him hard against my leg did as much to convince me as his words and tone. No matter that we hadn't done anything in this room, even with being together and alone, it had nothing to do with a lack of desire to do so. On either of our parts. Something else was keeping us from crossing that line. I wished I knew what it was.

Finally relaxing into one another with what felt like major hurdles behind us, we spent the rest of the night talking; talking endlessly.

He told me more about his nightly visits, when they started and why. I found it odd that we'd gone for any length of time without speaking, without being together in some sense. The concept seemed wholly foreign to me. But he was so earnest in his retelling. I had no choice but to accept his explanation of the silent treatment that had followed when he'd saved me from the van; and the day he'd finally broken it. I wondered idly what that had been like for me, seeing him every day, silent and brooding. I thought I knew exactly how I would have felt when he started speaking to me again. It would have been very close to how I felt now.

I told him about my past year in Jacksonville, my school and the college I'd settled on, about cheering at Phil's games, consoling both he and my mother after the losses. I spoke, though briefly, of the empty moments and the struggles to recover what I'd lost after the accident.

I didn't want to talk about myself, though. Those stories weren't interesting, just a life trying to be lived, one with no real purpose.

He told me more about himself, grudgingly or so it seemed; about how his family had come together, about his own change from a dying boy to the beautiful immortal in my arms, about their enhanced senses and how he could read the minds of those around him. This had brought an immediate blush to my cheeks when I remembered just what I'd been thinking when he'd first told me that he came to my bedroom at night. I relaxed again when he told me that my mind was, for reasons they still didn't know, immune to his gift.

As we'd talked, we'd shifted around until we were both lying on the small bed, my head on my pillow, his back to the headboard. Our hands remained twined unless he shifted them to play with my fingers. I kept fighting with my eyelids, keeping them stubbornly open. Edward didn't comment until he caught me trying to stifle a yawn.

"It's after two in the morning, Bella. You should sleep," he said in his velvet whisper. "You've had a long day."

That was true enough; I couldn't remember ever having a day filled with so much information or emotional upheaval. In a very real sense, I was shocked that I'd made it this long. Still, though, I struggled to remain awake. "I don't want to," I slurred, "what if you're gone in the morning?"

"I won't be. I promise," he leaned over to brush a soft kiss against my parted lips and I sighed into his mouth. "I've lived without you for too long, Bella love. I don't think I'm capable of doing that again."

"But you'll have to," I mumbled, my eyes already closed, mind already starting to drift away, content in the cool embrace of his arms. My conscious mind supplied one last word before I fell into the oblivion of sheer mental exhaustion. "Someday..."

 _Interlude ~ Edward_

Her parting word played through my head while she slept. Someday. Someday. Someday.

I watched her beautiful face, the slight creases on her forehead smoothing out as she fell deeper and deeper into sleep. So much I'd told her that I'd never wanted to, so many things she should have asked, but didn't.

The one question I never wanted to answer, now addressed. The question of why, when James had bitten her, I'd struggled to reverse it, to keep her mortal. Knowing Bella, though, the subject wasn't closed – just pushed aside in her drive to learn more about our shared past.

Unable to help myself, I leaned in and rested my lips against her forehead. I breathed in her intoxicating scent, felt the traitor venom well in my mouth, but merely pressed a kiss to the soft, warm skin instead.

 _Edward. I'm going to have to examine her at some point. We need to know,_ you _need to know. If the amnesia was caused by the venom..._

I'd shaken my head when he'd thought that. He knew my stance on Bella ever being turned, of ever dooming her to this life. He'd tried again, to "make me see sense," but I had closed his mind to Carlisle's thoughts by then.

Carlisle had many theories. In a very real sense, my father lived for theories; for proving or disproving them, for the hours of research into each direction his suppositions took him. As far as I was concerned, Carlisle could research and theorize all he wanted.

The question of whether or not Bella's amnesia had been caused by James' venom would forever be a mystery – because her blood would never come into contact with it again.

"Edward..."

Bella's soft, sleepy voice broke through my thoughts.

"Sleep, Bella love."

"Stay," she mumbled, "please stay. Don't go..."

I couldn't stop the smile that curved my lips as she spoke the same words she had that first fateful night I'd come here, stayed here, to watch her sleep.

The night my whole world changed.

"I'm not going anywhere," I whispered back to her, sliding my arm around her waist and drawing her in close to my body. Even as I said the words, I recognized the dishonesty in them. Someday I would leave her or, more to the point, she would leave me. Her human lifespan would steal her from me even more completely than her amnesia had. Until I could follow her in my own way.

That was the path her life would take, should take. And I would do nothing to alter it. The only thing that could ever render that affirmation unstable came with her next breath, her last words before the depth of her sleep silenced her talking.

"I love you."

I awoke slowly, consciousness coming back to me by degrees. I was almost used to it by now, waking rested and recharged. After a year of near constant exhaustion, it was a refreshing change.

I rolled over, my eyes still shut, and my arm flung out towards the edge of the bed. I was searching, without really knowing for what. I found nothing, just a bare, cool expanse of bed beside me.

It wasn't until I felt the absence that I realized what I'd been looking for. Or, rather, who.

Edward.

I felt my heart twist in my chest. Had it been another dream then? I flopped over onto my back and sighed, one arm coming up to cover my eyes. Of course it had been a dream. I'd taken my meeting with Edward and woven him into some sort of odd fantasy. Vampires, of all things. Vampires, beauty, and love.

Sadness filled me. It had been a good dream.

"Good morning."

I sat bolt upright, gasping his name as I did so. "Edward!"

I was out of the bed and settled into his lap before my heart could stutter out three more beats. "You're here."

"Of course," he said, my favorite crooked smile on his face. "I told you last night that I would stay."

.

"It was real, then?" I asked, pulling back to look into his warm, golden eyes. My hand coming up to rest on his cold cheek.

"Was what real?"

"When I woke up just now, I was positive yesterday was just a dream."

"I'm hardly the things pleasant dreams are made of, Bella."

"You are if I'm the one doing the dreaming," I retorted. I shifted my hand to cover his lips with my fingers when he looked ready to protest.

He watched me for a moment, his face still serious, then it smoothed out into a smile again. Positive that he wasn't going to protest any further, I let my hand drop to his shoulder and rested my head against his chest, listening to the silence there.

I was happier than I could ever remember being, but at the same time, I wasn't.

I'd learned so much about Edward and about our life together while I'd lived here. It seemed so unreal to me, that this breathtakingly beautiful boy had somehow fallen for me. Especially with no memories to draw from, to convince myself that it was real. There were just stories, just as Alice had said. They didn't seem real, somehow, without personal reminiscences attached. Like sitting in a history class, Bella History 101. And just like taking a class, it was interesting, but there was no connection.

"What are you thinking?"

His voice shocked me out of my disturbing thoughts. "Nothing," I said softly.

"Another thing that hasn't changed, Bella. You're still a terrible liar."

I pulled back with a gasp. "You told me you couldn't read my mind."

He chuckled. "I can't, but your body has reactions to your lies as well. I can hear _those_ just fine. Tell me, please."

I debated for a moment, but gave into the inevitable. I didn't think I'd ever been able to hold my ground against his intense, probing gaze.

"I was just thinking about something Alice said yesterday, when I asked her to tell me about what I was missing, all the things I still didn't remember. She said that it wouldn't be the same, that it would be like listening to a story and nothing more," I sighed and burrowed closer into his chest, "and she was right."

"Just don't tell her that, we'll never get the smug off her face," Edward said, but even though his words were joking, there was no humor in his voice. "You want them back," he said at last.

"Yes, I do. Happy as I am," I tightened my arms around him, "and I _am_ happy. It just feels incomplete. Maybe I'm greedy, I don't know. But I want it all, Edward. It feels…almost empty without knowing the full story. Like the Cliffs Notes version of my life, not the whole novel."

"Then let's see what we can do today to help complete your happiness a little further. Find the novel, find a few more keys for this," he smiled, tapping my temple.

I smiled at the prospect, felt a lift in my chest at the idea of another day spent with Edward, working to unlock the stubborn doors in my mind. Reluctantly, I moved off of his lap, intent on the world's fastest shower. I dashed into my closet to rummage up clean clothes to take into the bathroom with me.

There was a strange sound outside the closet as I fished for matching socks. A soft humming, a haunting melody. It sounded oddly familiar, the little of it I could hear over the sudden pounding in my head.

My head. I winced as the headache from yesterday in the forest came back with a vengeance. Sudden. Intense. And getting worse every second. The music had stopped, but now there was an odd sound, a buzzing. It sounded like a cell phone on vibrate.

I gasped then as the pain spread through me again even worse than before. I hadn't thought that was possible. I closed my eyes and dropped to the floor of the closet, jeans dropping forgotten to the floor.

"Bella?"

Edward was beside me in a flash, his cool hands clutching my face. "Bella, what is it?"

"Head," I whispered, anything louder would have been torture. My hands were balled into fists, pressing at my temples, trying to drive it away. "Hurts."

I couldn't say anything else. The pain was all I knew, all there was, and I followed it into darkness and blessed relief.


	9. Chapter 9

_Interlude ~ Edward_

I would always be amazed, when I came to think of that morning later, that no one saw me running flat out from Charlie's house with Bella in my arms. All thoughts of our attempts to stay inconspicuous fled the moment Bella fell unconscious.

When she'd fainted in the hospital, her first day back in Forks, it hadn't been pleasant, but it also hadn't been unexpected. I could smell the blood of Carlisle's incoming patient well enough to know the faint was coming. Standing out of her range of vision, I was still close enough to catch her before she hit the floor.

This morning, however, was quite different. I was as in the dark as I'd ever been around Bella. In the dark and suddenly feeling what could only be described as blind panic. Not for the first time, I cursed my inability to penetrate the veil that covered her mind. All I had to go on was the pain I'd seen in her eyes and the last words she'd said to me.

Thinking of nothing else but her, I'd snatched her up into my arms and jumped straight out her bedroom window. Then I ran straight to Carlisle.

They were, naturally, waiting for us. My family was crowded around the front door, well Rosalie wasn't there, but I hadn't expected her. Alice was the first to reach me.

"You need to answer your phone, Edward. Why even carry it if—"

My snarl of anger stopped her tirade mid-stream. I pushed past her without a look, running straight to where Carlisle was waiting for me, Alice, Emmett, Esme and Jasper following behind.

"What happened?" he asked, his arms reaching for Bella. I snarled again and he lowered his arms, settling instead for pointing to the sofa. I laid her there, setting a pillow under her head and seating myself on the floor beside her. I didn't relinquish her hand.

I heard the frantic and worried thoughts of my family and tried to find a way past the dread and panic in my own mind to answer them.

"Everything was fine. Just fine. Bella was upset over knowing only bits and pieces of her past and we were planning to spend the day together, to see what else we could uncover. She was in her closet, gathering up clothes to change into. Next thing I know, she's gasping, moaning in pain. I got to her just as she—" I broke off and glared at Carlisle, answering his thought, "no, she didn't fall or hit her head in there. There was nothing more than the sounds of clothes coming off hangers. When I got to her, she was clutching at her head, managed to tell me it hurt and then she..."

I broke off then, unable to continue along that track. Besides, it was quite clear what had happened next with Bella lying unconscious before us. I turned to glare at Alice. "You called me. What did you see? And why didn't you see it _before_ this happened?" I snapped out the last with acid coating each of my words.

Alice, too accustomed to my temper to be affected, spoke clearly. "It came out of nowhere, Edward. I saw her fall, nothing more. I'm not as tuned to her as I once was. It's getting clearer, but she's still hard for me to see. I called the second I saw it, but..." she trailed off, her worried eyes on Bella. I had to work hard to remember that Alice loved her, too.

"I've got your bag, Carlisle." This was Emmett and I looked up at him. I was surprised to see Alice's concern mirrored on his face, but perhaps I shouldn't have been. Emmett had always liked Bella, almost as happy as Alice, Carlisle and Esme to have her back in our lives again. Rosalie, I knew, could have cared less. Jasper was. Well, he was Jasper. Having a human around was difficult for him, but it made Alice happy and that was all he needed to find a way to welcome her.

"Edward, you need to move if I'm going to examine her," he held up a hand in a flash move human eyes would never have caught, "and I'd appreciate if you didn't snarl at me again."

It was difficult, but I did as he asked. My fingers trailed up her arm, brushed her hair back from her forehead and then down her other arm as I shifted position onto the back of the couch. I couldn't break contact with her; I needed to feel the warmth of her skin under my fingers. It was the only thing keeping me sane.

I listened to Carlisle's evaluation as he worked over her and ended up just as confused as he was when we came to the same conclusion. There was nothing physically wrong with Bella.

"Except that she's unconscious," I said aloud.

"Yes, apart from that. All we can do is wait, Edward."

"Alice?" I said, looking over my shoulder at my sister.

I saw her eyes unfocus, listened to her mind as she searched the immediate future and we both sighed at the same time. Nothing. There was nothing to see, just Bella lying on the couch. The only difference between what she'd seen and what we saw now was the monitor and IV line attached to her.

"What does that mean?" I asked through clenched teeth.

"Her decision isn't made, Edward. Whatever's happening, it isn't physical, as Carlisle said. Her mind has closed down and until she decides to rejoin us, there's nothing we can do."

She didn't have to explain the monitor or the IV, I knew what those meant well enough.

"Bella," I said softly, my body leaning protectively over her, my cheek resting on her chest. And tried to let the soothing sound of her heartbeat act as panacea to my panic.

 _Bella._

The first thing that came back to me was feeling. Several feelings. Soft. Hard. Warm. Cold. Comfortable. Secure. I looked around for their cause, but there was no one with me. No one was holding me, no hands touched or soothed me. I was alone.

But I'd always been alone. Hadn't I?

I looked down at my body, amazed to see it not in shorts or cut-offs, not in the old sweats I preferred when hanging around the house. I was wearing a white, flowing dress. That was strange. I didn't own anything like this. Had Renee been forcing girl clothes on me again?

I looked around, but there was nothing there – just me, and an odd, swirling white mist. Nothing and no one. I was alone, but I wasn't afraid. The secure feeling was still there. I felt safe. A dream, then? It must be.

I remembered the pain then. Blinding, crippling pain that brought me to my knees and sapped everything from me as my body struggled to accept it. I searched for it, but came up empty. The pain was gone and I felt perfectly fine.

There was a glimmer of light ahead of me. I was sure it hadn't been there a moment before, so I moved towards it, curious. I didn't trip once, not even over the flowing fabric that tangled in my legs as I walked. Right, I was definitely dreaming.

 _It's been two days._

I frowned at the words that echoed off the dense mist surrounding me. Two days since what? I didn't know. The words made no sense, the voice unfamiliar. I listened for more, but there was nothing. Just the peaceful silence of my dream. I kept walking.

The light got brighter as I approached. It was a lamp, sitting on a desk in a small room. My room. Not the plain, childlike one in Forks, but my bedroom in Renee's house in Jacksonville. I frowned and looked around. Then I gasped.

"What...?"

I stopped because I didn't know how to ask what I wanted to know. How did you question yourself? Because it was me, sitting at my little desk in Renee's house. I was wearing the shorts I'd expected to see on my body when I'd awakened. The other me was smiling, not a happy smile, though. This expression looked more like pity.

"Hello, Bella," she said.

"Who...who are you?" It seemed a stupid thing to ask, but I asked anyway.

"I'm you, of course. In a manner of speaking," she answered.

"What does that mean?"

"I'm a part of you, a part of your mind. I'm the one that shields you from certain…outside influences." Then she reached into the pocket of her shorts and drew out something. It was a key ring.

A key ring? Why would she...I?...be holding a key ring? What would I possibly want to unlock?

The doors! Realization brought with it not only a host of images I couldn't quite grasp, but a need that ached in every part of me. My past, my memories.

I gasped and darted forward, trying to snatch it from her hand.

"I don't think so, Bella. You're not ready yet."

"The hell I'm not," I shouted back. "Those are my memories you're keeping from me. I want them back."

"Do you?" she asked, twirling the metal ring around her finger. "Then why haven't they all come back on their own then? They've been here all along, you know."

 _What's going on?_

 _I'm not sure, she's mumbling something, but I can't make sense of it._

 _You said she talks in her sleep?_

 _Yes, she does._

Edward. I knew the voice now. Knew it, embraced it, and yearned for it. My mind called up a myriad of pictures of his beautiful face and I felt like crying. I'd just found him again. Where was he? Why wasn't he with me?

My head whipped around but there was no one else in the room. But he had to be close if I could hear him. Right? Where was I? The last thing I remembered was...was...my closet. And music. And...

The pain came back, pressing on my temples like someone had caught my head in a vise. I moaned and clutched my head.

"Stop, please," I whispered. "Why are you doing this to me?"

"Because you're making the same mistakes, Bella. Your mind knows this. That's why it hurts, don't you see? Most people run away from pain, find a way to avoid it. Your mind is telling you that what you're doing will only lead to more. This," she twirled the key ring again, "will only lead to more."

"I want them back," I said through the increasing pressure in my mind.

"They disappeared for a reason."

"Why? Why can't I remember?" Something stirred behind the ache in my head. "...the poison?" That wasn't the right word, but it was close, so I went with it. "Didn't that...?"

"Does it matter? It's not like he'll ever let that happen again, ever let you be with him. He's too dangerous to you, he knows that. He left you, didn't he? Left you in Phoenix, stayed away when you came back to Forks? Hardly the actions of someone who claims to be unable to live without you."

An awful sound filled the air between us, a loud banging like a door being thrown open in a windstorm and I heard Edward's voice. Not the soft echo through the mist like before, but deep and real. This could only be a memory.

 _I don't think that that would be possible for us. I can never, never afford to lose any kind of control when I'm with you_.

 _I might not be a human, but I'm a man._

"Don't you see, Bella? Do you really think anyone could live without _that_ part of their life?"

"But he said...he said it was..." I couldn't think, couldn't remember what he'd said. Those memories were blurring now, too. I could hear, somewhere far behind me, the sounds of doors softly closing.

The memories were all blurring, even the ones I'd recovered.

No. No, no, no, no. The single denial was a scream in my head. I turned from the woman in front of me and stumbled off away from her, away from the pain. And tried to find a way out.

The blackness swallowed me again.

 _Interlude ~ Edward_

I watched the monitor's frantic beat steady, tracked every blip of her heart rate correspond with the beats I heard in her chest. I consoled myself that she could hear my soothing words, wherever she was, but I also knew I was a master at lying, even to myself. Carlisle hadn't given me good odds that my words penetrated into her unconscious mind. I didn't care. I still spoke to her, tried to soothe her when her distress registered in her pulse rate.

I could also hear Alice, sitting across the room from me. I didn't look up when her thoughts intruded into my vigil. It was just more of the same. Her latest attempt to see into Bella's future had found nothing different than the sight she saw in the present. I told myself this was a good thing, as it meant her condition wasn't deteriorating, but it was a very cold comfort.

Because Bella was still locked in her own mind.

I'd been here, right here, for two days. Two long, excruciating days with nothing to show for it but the completion of Alice's vision the day I arrived with her unconscious body in my arms. Bella was now hooked to an IV and monitor to track her physical well being and keep her body hydrated and functioning. I'd questioned the monitor – why bother if we could hear her heart just fine? But Carlisle had explained as he hooked it to her that there were other medical reasons for the monitor. Blood pressure, tracking trends in the increase of heart rate, and so on. I didn't pay much attention to the specific reasons. I knew the basics.

He was keeping her body healthy while her mind struggled.

I had only left her side once, for as long as it took me to call Charlie and explain that Bella had collapsed at my house and that she would be with us until she recovered. Carlisle had taken over then, lying through his teeth about the inadvisability of moving her in such a state. Charlie had accepted this, or at least pretended to.

Charlie Swan wasn't a stupid man, just a practical one. I could see into his mind, but only vaguely, like a radio out of tune. I knew he suspected something was off about us, but at the same time, he did nothing to voice those suspicions. From what I was able to gather, he'd chosen early on to simply not think about it too much. And, like his daughter, he stuck to his decisions.

I wondered then, as I did sometimes during the long, dark nights while Bella mumbled next to me, about the complexities of their minds. I'd never encountered anything like them. Humans, for the most part, were fairly simple to read. Simple and straightforward. The Swans...weren't. From Bella's closed mind to Charlie's ability to compartmentalize things he didn't want to think about...

Compartmentalize. What was it Bella had said? That she thought her memories were locked behind doors in her mind? Doors. Compartments.

And now Bella was locked behind those doors too, locked away from me.

I leaned down and pressed my lips to her forehead. "Find your way back to me, love. Find the key."

 _Find your way back to me. Find the key._

"Edward?"

His voice. I could hear his voice, but it sounded so far away. An echo. My arms reached out instinctively, fingers searching through the haze. But there was nothing around me but smoke and mist.

The pain was gone again, as was the blackness. It was light again and I could see the bright spot in the distance. I didn't move towards it this time. There was only pain there. Pain and no answers.

I needed answers. Quickly. The longer I stayed in this...dream?...whatever it was, the more I lost.

As I walked through the great swirls that parted for me easily while I moved, I talked to myself to fill the silence. I called out to the echoing voice of Edward that reached me occasionally and recounted the memories I was losing the longer I remained in this cloudbank.

Had it been Edward in my hospital room? Or just a confused orderly?

"No," I said aloud, "it was Edward. Waiting for me to wake up. He didn't leave my side."

What was it the Cullens called themselves? Herbivores? That didn't seem right.

"Vegetarians," I said again, my fingers itching for a pen and paper. Or even just a pen. I could write these truths on my dress if I had to – anything to keep the rapidly fading memories with me.

There was something about my hand, too. Something wrong with it. I held both up, focusing on them through the mist, but there was nothing there; nothing out of the ordinary, anyway. Ten fingers, ten short rounded nails. A freckle on the back of one hand, my right.

"No. That's not right. That's not…there should be…something there. Where is it? Where's the…Where is it?" I was almost screaming the words now, panic flooding through me.

 _What's happening?_

 _I'm not sure. She started thrashing around just now. Nearly pulled the IV line out._

 _Listen to her heart, it's out of control._

 _It happened once before. Bella, love, it's all right, you're safe. I'm here._

The memory came back, clear and sharp. A crescent shape on my right hand. I looked down, and there it was. Clear as it had ever been. My fingers searched it out and stroked it. I exhaled, my body calmed.

My scar. James' bite mark. I closed my eyes and saw the picture again, Edward's lips covering my skin, the pain of the venom waning as my consciousness drifted away.

Out of nowhere I felt a cold pressure on my left hand. No, that wasn't right. It was cold, that much was true, but it was warm, too. Warmth that lingered and spread through me. But this was a good burning, like standing in front of a fire on a cold night. My body hummed from the heat of it and my eyes cleared. I could see through the mists, see through the clouds that had blocked my path and sent me wandering aimlessly.

I was in a hallway. A corridor.

It was lined with doors.

 _Interlude – Edward_

"Doors."

The single word, spoken so softly I knew even Alice and Emmett, sitting across the room from me, hadn't heard it. It was the first intelligible thing Bella had said. I was so accustomed to the indistinct mumblings that I hadn't recognized the word for what it was at first.

I drew in a breath through my clenched teeth when I did.

"Edward?" Alice asked. I waved her question away.

"That's right, Bella. Doors. Find the doors. Open them."

"Can't," her voice was still the soft murmur, but it filled me with a hope I hadn't felt in days. I wanted to speak again, but her lips were still moving. I went completely motionless, my entire being focused on the girl in front of me.

I waited, watching her lips move. "Locked."

I leaned down towards her, my hand on her chest to feel the increased rate of her heart beneath my fingers. Softly, I pressed my lips to her forehead.

"Can you find the keys?" I asked, low in her ear.

Nothing. Her lips were still.

"Bella?"

No response. Just the steady beat of her heart. Bella was quiet again.

I straightened, sighing. So close. Every time she moved or thrashed I allowed myself the hope that she was coming out of it. I hadn't realized how much I'd pinned on this hope until she went silent again. Silent and still as... No. I refused to let my mind go in that direction. She was going to come out of this.

I waited for another word, another sign from her, but there was nothing; just her slow deep breathing and the even, stable heartbeat beneath my hand.

"Come back to me, Bella. Please."

Tears poured unrestrained down my cheeks as I stared at the corridor. My hands were red and raw, my shoulders ached, and I was breathing as if I'd run miles. My efforts, however, had been for absolutely nothing. Ever door along the corridor remained closed tight. Not one of them had so much as budged no matter how hard I pushed, pulled, kicked or shoved.

 _Please._

"I'm trying," I whispered back.

"Then why aren't any of them open?"

My head whipped up. She was back. The sneering version of me was standing at the other end of the corridor. She grinned at me, twirling her key ring around her finger again.

A burst of anger filled me and I pushed myself off the floor, intent on nothing more than rushing her and wrenching the keys from her by force. But before I could take two steps, I heard the voices again. Everything stopped. Even me.

 _I'm not leaving._

 _Edward, you've been sitting her for three days. I'll sit with her for a while._

 _Alice._

 _Edward._

The voices stopped with nothing more than a vague growling. The silence left in its wake was familiar for this place – wherever I was. I'd given up on the dream idea a while ago. If I was truly dreaming, I'd be awake by now.

I looked across to the other me at the end of the long line of corridors, my brow puckering when I saw the expression on her face. It was twisted like mine, but with an edge to it. I tried to fathom what her look meant; it looked almost like fear.

Then the music started. Soft, sweet. A song I'd never heard before…or had I? I had no real ear for classical music, I only knew the songs Renee played and of those I only ever remembered my favorites. This piece bore no resemblance to anything I'd heard Renee play.

It haunted the corridor, bounced off the mist surrounding us. Or, rather, me. When I looked for the other woman, she was gone. I was alone again; alone with the corridor and the doors and no keys – alone with my frustration. My hands came up to cover my face, to wipe away the tears coursing again down my cheeks.

 _It's all right, Bella. We're all right here. We miss you._

It was Alice's voice, her high soprano voice recognizable even in this gloomy place. I clung to it, tried to hold it to me, but I could no more grasp it than I could get one of the doors open.

Another voice then. Deeper, familiar, but with the same velvet quality I knew so well. Emmett.

 _Why're you playing Esme's song? If you're gonna play, play Bella's._

There was a sharp hiss somewhere close to me. Almost like a gasp. The quality of it made me think of Alice. I knew I was right when she spoke again.

 _Do it, Edward! Play it!_

I heard it then, the change in the music filling the corridor, filling the very mist around me. It filled me, too. I felt it from the tips of my toes, spreading through my body until it was a part of me.

That's when the shaking started. I couldn't tell at first if it was me or the corridor where I sat, unable to move. The pain came back next, the same crippling pain I'd felt in my closet, in the room with the other me. I cried out, clutching my head, but it didn't leave. I didn't fall into the black again.

The music continued through the shaking and the pain. The music was the cause, there was no other explanation. I'd been fine before the music came. Fine.

But was I? No. I'd been far from fine, locked in this swirling mist hell and away from the people I loved. Locked away from Edward.

Edward. Thinking of him, his brilliant, beautiful eyes, his cold, comforting touch, the glass-smooth feel of his lips when he kissed me, the musical quality of his voice, his long fingers as they moved effortlessly over black and white piano keys when he played my...

Another shudder ripped through the corridor, jarring me back to the present. I stared around wildly. There was no place to go. I tried to stand, to reach for the doors again, to search for a way out, but I couldn't move.

Little tendrils of mist were now inching towards me. I saw them swirl around my ankles, but my legs wouldn't move. I looked up, trying to find the source, and my breath froze in my chest. It wasn't the white mist I'd grown used to seeing here, this time. The mass coming for me was black. Storm cloud black. Like the sky in Forks just before a big rain, the type that always threatened to wash the whole town into the ocean.

"No," I said softly, barely audible over the rise of the pain in my head, the music in my ears or the thundering shake of the corridor around me.

The mist continued forward and I screamed.

"NO!"

The answering crash was deafening. It cleaved through the pain and I felt my head split in two from the force of it. My hands flattened over my skull to try and keep it in one piece.

Then, like a crack of thunder from the approaching storm, every door in front of me burst wide open.

And I fell, tumbling through the mist and the black and the nothingness of where I was. Edward's name wrenched from my lips, from my very soul, tugging at me, tethering me, pulling me through the dark and pain.

Until I landed, soft and silent, with nothing but a steady beep to welcome me home.


	10. Chapter 10

The steady, constant beeping was the first sound I registered. I kept my eyes tight shut as I tried to place it, fearful of opening them for reasons I couldn't quite name. I shifted, felt a tugging at my hand and the firmness of the mattress beneath me, and knew where I was.

Hospital.

No. That wasn't right. I was lying on something firm, but not uncomfortable. The air around me was sweet, fragrant, not the harsh, antiseptic smell I knew so well from ER visits. It was...floral? No, that wasn't right, either. Not entirely. But it was close enough.

My eyes fluttered open.

I saw the reason for the floral smell at once, a huge arrangement of what looked like very blurry flowers was on the table beside my...bed? No, it was a couch. I could see the back of it. The unknown aroma, quite different from the flowers? I hadn't seen what caused that yet.

But I could still hear the frenetic beat of a heart monitor, feel the pull of something in my hand. Monitors and IVs did not belong in a living room. I closed my eyes again, confused. Was I dreaming again?

"No you don't, Bella."

Cold and warm. Hard and comforting. The touch to my cheek set the monitor beside me pinging out of control. The voice reached through to the very essence of me, pulled me forward, and my eyes opened again.

I turned towards the source of it, but I couldn't focus.

"Bella, love?"

Another cold touch. My own breathing and the monitor's blip were the only sounds in the room.

I blinked again to clear my vision and found myself staring at twin orbs of pitch black.

"Edward," I gasped.

My hands came up to cover my face, but I couldn't cover my eyes. They were locked on his, unable to move away or close. I was frozen in place, kept prisoner by his intense, probing gaze and the unmistakable emotions I saw in them.

I heard dim, distant, echoing voices. One I knew. One I loved. It was his voice, Edward's. And mine. But his lips weren't moving, and I wasn't speaking. The conversation was in my mind.

 _You said you loved me._

 _You knew that already._

 _It's nice to hear, just the same._

Then, from nowhere.

 _You are my life now._

I gasped, waiting for the pain again. It didn't come. Only silence. I couldn't even hear the monitor's beep anymore. The silence was deafening. Ominous. It stretched on between us, our staring eyes locked. I started to shake because sound was returning – a powerful, rushing sound, like an oncoming train.

It slammed into me with the same amount of force and I knew I'd have crumpled to the ground if I hadn't already been lying down. I wanted to close my eyes, but they wouldn't obey. They were still locked on Edward's.

The influx of images. It was too much. They came at me over and over and over again, battering the inside of my mind like an invading army. I whimpered, and my eyes finally closed.

 _Edward's black eyes. An angry face over a biology lab table, angry and glorious._

 _A crooked finger across a crowded lunch room. A wink. A crooked smile. A bottle cap spinning and long, pale fingers._

 _Staring at a black and white computer screen, researching fantasies that were all too real._

 _Furious eyes in a darkened car as strange men surrounded me. Those same eyes across a restaurant table. The sweet smell of him coming from the borrowed leather jacket I wore._

 _His beautiful, uncertain smile as he offered me a ride to school._

"Bella? Bella! What's happening?"

 _His favorite food was mountain lion. Emmett's was an irritable grizzly bear._

 _A secluded meadow in the midst of a rainforest, the sun bright on his mesmerizing skin. His hand cool in mine, his cheek to my chest. A masochistic lion in love with a stupid lamb._

 _Running faster than I'd ever traveled outside an airplane, slung across his back like a backpack._

 _The first kiss, my attack. Oops._

 _Sleeping with him beside me, his soft voice humming in my ear. My lullaby. Sitting in my rocking chair, arms wide, waiting for me._

 _Hearing him play, Esme's, Mine. Meeting his family. My family._

 _Baseball. And James. Frantic packing, saying goodbye, my flight from Forks. Impatience and a ballet studio._

 _My Angel. Calling me back from the black._

Black. It was all around me again, the nothingness of it pressed in on me. I waited, gasping, for it to swallow me whole and pull me away.

"Bella."

Was it memory? Or was it now?

His soft, sweet voice was a caress, a tether, as it had been then, as it always would be. I reached out and took it. My eyes opened.

"Edward...," I said, my voice soft, hoarse. I wasn't even sure if my voice was audible, but it didn't matter. He heard me as I new he would.

There was so much I wanted to say, but I couldn't move my mouth. The intense pain was gone, but it left a bone-deep exhaustion in its wake. It was all I could do to keep my eyes open.

"Tired," I managed just as I lost the battle with my eyelids. My hand reached out blindly to find his. It did, and I sighed deeply, content.

"They're all open," I said, but it sounded slurred when it came out. I wasn't sure he understood. "You were..." But my exhaustion won before I could finish.

It was the voices that woke me.

"Alice."

"Edward, I've told you already. Soon."

"And you can't be more specific than that?"

"Honestly, Edward, you'd think that after over a hundred years, you'd have learned some degree of patience."

I laughed.

Edward was beside me before my next heartbeat.

"Bella?"

I was smiling before my eyes opened, both thrilled and relieved to have his voice so close. He was really here, right next to me, not an echo through the mist – elusive and untouchable.

As his face came into focus, my hand reached out, searching blindly until at last it came into contact with his cool, hard skin. I sighed, though it sounded more like a purr. This was the security of my dream world brought to me in vivid reality. Edward, by my side. Edward, holding me. There would be no other place, no other person, that would make me feel this way.

"Edward," I managed through my dry throat, coughing slightly.

"Let me get Carlisle," Edward said softly, already moving to stand.

"No!" The vehement denial was a rasp and my hand tightened on his. It felt so weak, though, I wondered if he even felt it.

Apparently, however, my intention came through clear enough and Edward sat back down, choosing to call out to Carlisle instead.

It seemed to take forever for Carlisle to check me over, to remove the monitor's sensors and dispose of the IV. I had to close my eyes for that one. He'd brought ice chips for me and I sucked on those while he worked, relieving my parched throat. But still, I didn't speak except to answer his questions about how I felt. I merely stared at Edward, and he at me.

The moment was too private, and it was for Edward alone. So I waited until Carlisle had left again, taking his medical equipment with him, and reached again for Edward's hand.

"Can we go somewhere," I paused and looked around the main living area, "a little less out in the open?"

"Of course," he agreed readily.

I pulled my elbows in and pushed myself up; even that slight movement caused my head to spin a little. I grimaced.

"Allow me," he said, his voice that perfect cadence of an earlier, more genteel time. He scooped me easily into his arms, cradling me close to his body.

"Don't drop me," I teased.

"I think I can handle it, Bella," he laughed back, and I was relieved to see some of the tension truly leave his face. There had been something magical about Edward's smile from the moment I'd first seen it, and it felt like a true homecoming to be in its presence again.

In no time at all, we were in his room. Edward sat on big leather couch, I sat on Edward's lap. His arms were tight enough around me that I knew he was in no more hurry to let go of me than I was to be released.

"You said," he began. "Right after you came back, you said they were open. Does that mean..."

I smiled. "Yes, Edward. I remembered everything. It's all back, every crooked smile, every glare across a biology table, every out of control van and baseball game. They're all back now, the doors are all open."

I stopped, biting my lip. I knew what had to be said, what I had to say, but I was having trouble getting the words out. Everything I'd put him through over the past year... I'd felt the remorse of it before my memories had come back, but this – knowing everything I'd left behind, feeling every emotion of our journey to find our way together – my actions in Phoenix were just that much more horrible. I didn't know what I'd have done if he'd ever left me in such a fashion, but I could imagine. I shuddered.

"Bella?"

"I'm so sorry, Edward," I managed after several deep breaths.

His hand stilled in the process of running up and down my back. "What on earth could you possibly have to apologize for?"

"I forgot you; forgot the best part of my life. I said I'd love you forever, and then I left you without a ..."

I never got the chance to finish my apology. Edward turned me just enough to enfold me in his arms. He kissed my apology away with a desperation I'd never felt from him before, not even at the moment of our parting so long ago in his garage.

His lips moved over mine ruthlessly, his hands tangling in my hair. I tried to remember how to breathe, how to think, but Edward's mouth wiped even that essential knowledge from me. I didn't need it anyway. With Edward's lips on mine, with his intoxicating scent in my nose, his delicious taste in my mouth, breathing and thinking were non-essential distractions.

It wasn't until my head started spinning that Edward finally pulled his lips from mine. Though he didn't need the oxygen as I did, we both dragged in gasps of it while our bodies remained together, foreheads touching. He continued to rain soft kisses over my skin, my cheeks, my jaw, the sensitive hollow beneath my ear and I struggled to find my words.

"It was you, you know," I said breathlessly.

"What was me?" he said softly into my ear. I shivered, his cold breath on my skin causing the opposite reaction and spreading warmth through me. Warmth and something else – something I didn't entirely understand.

"You were the key, Edward."

He pulled back then, his eyes on mine, his expression confused.

I continued before he could ask. "Before I came here, there was nothing. Just a big black hole in my mind. Then I returned and little things came back, inconsequential things. Nothing that made sense. It wasn't until I saw you, touched you, had you in my life again that I started to truly regain some of what I'd lost. The most precious things I'd lost.

"And then, in my bedroom," I stopped because he stiffened suddenly. Instinctively, I reached up and placed my hand against his cheek. "When I collapsed..." I stopped again, but not because of any reaction he had but because that time was already slipping from me.

"What happened, Bella?"

"I'm not entirely sure," I said and my brows contracted as I struggled to remember. "I was lost, searching. I heard your voice, I felt safe, but the memories wouldn't come. All the doors were locked. There was," I paused, searching for the right way to explain it, "there was another me. She kept taunting me, holding my memories from me."

"Another you?" Apparently, I wasn't the only one confused.

"That's the best way I can explain it, she looked like me, talked to me. She said she was the reason I couldn't remember, that she was...some sort of barrier, or shield, or something, that protected my mind from pain. That remembering would only bring more pain, so that's why she kept the doors locked."

"But you opened them," he said softly, "you found a way to open the doors."

"No, Edward," I smiled, "you did. I heard you playing Esme's favorite. I was tired, exhausted and frustrated, but then you switched to my lullaby, the doors opened and I found my way home again. When I opened my eyes, when I saw your face, the memories came back. All of them, every moment we spent together."

"You were thrashing," he said and the pain he'd gone through in that moment was evident in his voice, and etched in every line of his face. "When you opened your eyes again, you looked at me and started shaking. We didn't know, I didn't know, what was wrong. It got a little tense there for a bit," he paused, the hint of a wry smile on his lips, "I might have punched Carlisle, I don't remember."

I couldn't be sure if he was teasing me or not, but it didn't matter. The result was the same and a small bubble of laughter crept up my throat and escaped my lips. He smiled fully then, the same crooked smile that had always sent my heart into overdrive.

"I missed you," I said into the silence. "Even when I didn't remember you, there was this ache here," I brought my hand up to cover my heart. "I didn't understand it; I just knew I had to figure out why. What I was missing, what I'd lost beyond just my memories."

"I missed you, too, Bella. More than I can express in words." He must have decided to try and tell me in other ways, because his lips were on mine again, glass smooth and seductive, moving with mine in ways they never had before. The unfamiliar warmth started to spread from my lips outward, touching every part of my body.

My position on his lap was precarious at best, and not the most comfortable. My neck was craned in an awkward position, so I shifted around to face him more fully, my knees on either side of his legs. I didn't realize the foolhardiness of this move until I tried to get closer to his intoxicating kisses and my body brushed against his in a way it never had before.

We both gasped.

Shaking slightly, I pulled away to look into his eyes. I'd seen them in every variation, or so I'd thought. Light from a recent feeding to black with thirst and everything in between. But I'd never seen his eyes like this – hungry in a way that had nothing to do with blood, mine or anything else's.

I knew it was hunger I saw there, because that was the only word to describe what I was feeling. A burning hunger that was prickling my skin, increasing my heart rate and setting my blood to thrumming in a way it never had before.

This was want. Need. Physical and new, terrifying and exciting. My head lowered, searching for his lips again as my body shifted above his again, slowly, experimentally.

I brushed against him again, felt the hard ridge beneath me and a wildfire erupted in my veins. So lost in this new feeling, I didn't notice that he'd turned to stone beneath me. Not until I bent to kiss him again and felt his stone lips utterly still beneath mine.

"Edward?" I asked tentatively. My voice sounded like someone else's, low and hoarse with the desire still burning through every nerve ending. Desire and a need that was becoming almost painful.

And then he was gone.

It took me a minute to move past the sudden loss of his body beneath mine and the shock of his departure to look around to find him. He was still there, as far as he could get while remaining in the same room with me.

"Edward?" I asked again, confusion taking the place of the desire in my voice. "What is it?"

"You...," he stopped and scraped a hand over his granite face. "You said you remembered everything."

"I did," I answered, feeling my eyebrows contract in a frown.

"Then you remember what I told you, that first night in your bedroom. I can't ever lose control around you, Bella. You're too fragile. That," he waved a hand toward me where I still sat, my breathing ragged, "isn't an option for us."

I had to work to concentrate on his words while I stared at him. My body was still suffering the after effects of newly discovered need. Slowly, though, my higher brain functions returned. As did a memory from my time in the mist, the sneering me calling back the night Edward had explained why we could never be close...that way.

"Yes, I remember," I said at last. My frown had not eased away, if anything it intensified. The room grew steadily quieter as our breathing eased. The need, so out of control before, had lessened and I was able to think. It took me all of a few seconds to find the solution.

A smile bloomed on my face and I rose off the couch, not surprised to find my legs shaking. I managed to make my way over to him nonetheless, stopping just in front of him to place my hand on his cheek. His expression was wary, his head cocked to the side.

"There's only one solution then, isn't there?"

"Bella," he sighed when I moved closer still, pressing my body against his.

"You know it's true," I said, but without as much conviction. By the look on his face, he knew no such thing.

"What do I know?"

"The only solution is for you to change me, Edward. Then I won't be as breakable anymore."

The smile borne of my conviction that this was the best course of action melted away a second later when he picked me up and carried me back to the couch, touching as little of me as he could in the process.

"E-Edward?" I stammered, staring after him, confused.

"That's no solution, Bella."

"Of course it is," I countered.

"I will not end your life."

"You wouldn't be, though, don't you see? You'd be starting it," I said, trying to close the distance between us, but he darted away before I'd even tried to get up off the couch.

"I will not turn you into a monster, will not doom you to this existence."

His continual brush offs and adamant stance, the denial of what I knew to be the only answer spiked an anger in me I'd never felt before. Everything we'd been through...? Had it all been for nothing after all?

"So, what then? You love me. I'm your life now, or so you said, but we're going to what, Edward? Live out my human life celibate forever? You'll kiss me, but not touch me further than that? You'll stay with me as my seventeen year old companion when I'm middle aged and you have to pose as my son? Or my grandson when I get old? What sort of a life is that?"

"Bella, you've been ill. You don't know what you're-"

I held up a hand, cutting him off. "I know exactly what I'm saying, Edward Cullen. I'm saying that I love you, that I want to spend my life, my existence, with you. I fought through the hell of losing my memories of you, through the nothingness of mist and confusion I was just trapped in to find you again. I want to love you in every way there is, not just hand holding and stolen kisses that leave us both panting and frustrated. I deserve, _we_ deserve more than that."

Edward hadn't moved, hadn't even breathed. He was still as stone on the other side of the room, staring at me with an expression that looked...looked like someone had lit him on fire.

I tried to stand, to go to him, but my legs, weak from however long I'd been trapped in the mist, started shaking violently beneath me as soon as I did. Angry at my weakness, I dropped back onto the couch with a huff. Still, Edward didn't move.

When, after five long, torturous minutes, he hadn't so much as shifted his weight, I knew I had my answer. He wasn't going to change me; he wasn't going to touch me.

He loved me, but not enough to keep me. Not enough to love me in every way.

"Alice?" I called out, my voice just barely higher than my normal conversational tone. It didn't matter, I knew she would hear me.

"Yes, Bella?" she answered, mere seconds later from the other side of Edward's closed bedroom door.

"Can you take me home, please?"

The door opened and she walked in. There was no surprise on her face, no confusion over why I was asking her for a ride. Of course there wasn't. Everyone in or near the house had heard my angry words. I wondered idly if she'd seen this coming, but I didn't ask. I didn't want to know.

"Sure I will," she said simply and walked over to where I sat on the couch, holding her arms out as if to carry me. When I tried to stand, she merely shook her head. "Your legs aren't strong enough for stairs, Bella. You'll fall and that will hardly help in your recovery."

Knowing she was right, just my few minutes of standing before Edward had exhausted them; I relaxed and let her pick me up. I was almost half a foot taller than Alice, but she carried me as easily as if I were a child.

The tears started down my cheeks when her arms tightened around me. Her cold embrace felt so familiar, yet wrong at the same time. These were the wrong arms holding me, these arms were taking me away from everything I'd ever wanted and could never have.

I spoke just before we cleared the threshold of his room. "If you change your mind..."

But I couldn't finish, because I knew he wouldn't. And to say it would make me sound just that much more pathetic. Instead I buried my head against Alice's shoulder and let the tears come. I thought I heard Alice say something, call Edward a fool, but I was crying to hard to be certain.

"Bella?"

Charlie's worried voice was the only thing that had a chance of pulling me from my tears and making me find some measure of composure. Because it wouldn't do for Charlie to see petite Alice carrying me to the house, she walked next to me instead, letting me lean on her for support as we made our way to the house.

"What happened? Are you all right? Carlisle said I couldn't come see you and I've been out of my mind..."

"She's fine, Charlie," Alice said in her voice like wind chimes, then muttered something too low for even me to hear. "Just tired from her illness."

Charlie was next to us now and reached an arm out to take her place supporting me. "I've got her Alice," he said, "thanks for bringing her home."

"Not a problem at all."

"Why didn't E—"

I looked up when he didn't finish his question to see Alice with her hand up, shaking her head at Charlie. Something passed between them, but I was too lost in trying to control my own emotions to think too much about it. I just let myself be led into the house and settled on the couch by my father and listened with a heavy heart as I heard Carlisle's Mercedes pull away from the house.

Alice was gone. She wouldn't come back. My life with the Cullens was over in a way I'd never thought possible. I waited for the tears to come, but the grief had moved beyond tears. I was too numb for even that much emotion.

I heard Charlie's boots clomp up the stairs and back down again. Seconds later, I felt Grandma Swan's quilt wrap around me, Charlie's hands squeezing my shoulders before he moved back to his chair.

"Bella?"

I raised my now-dry eyes to his and had to blink a few times to register the look on his face. Even after the blinking, I couldn't put a name to it.

"What happened to you at the Cullens?" he asked when I didn't respond.

"I...I collapsed, I think. My memories were trying to come back and I...fainted or something."

Charlie nodded, as if that gelled with his assumptions. "And did they, come back I mean?"

"Yes," I said softly, the tears trying to creep their way back into my eyes. I should have been ecstatic. I should have been smiling and laughing, but laughter was further away from me that the mountains of the Moon.

"Bella."

I didn't speak; I couldn't around the emotion clogging my throat. I could only meet his eyes.

"I don't pretend to understand your connection to the Cullens, or theirs to you. I got a glimpse of it for the first time in Phoenix, watching them in the waiting room. They, Carlisle, Alice and Edward," he paused when I flinched at Edward's name, but only briefly. "They looked like I felt, helpless and scared green. And then, when it became clear that you'd be going to Jacksonville with Renee, again their faces, his especially...I knew there was something more than your first boyfriend going on."

I still couldn't speak, all I could do was stare at my father.

"I do know that there's something about the Cullens that isn't...well, it isn't normal."

I found my voice enough to try and splutter a denial, but Charlie merely held up a hand.

"I'm not the sharpest knife in the drawer, Bella, but I'm not an idiot. I'm also a cop. If you think a boy, a family, was going to get that close to my daughter, my only child, without looking into them, you don't know me very well. Maybe it was missing having you here, my way of trying to help you or get closer to you by finding out more about this boy who seemed to be as lost as I was without you around, but I started looking into him, and his family. I found some very confusing things and those things started me looking closer. I don't know who, or what, they are, but I know it's not a doctor and his adopted teenagers. At least not after you scratch the veneer off the surface."

My jaw dropped. If Charlie had searched into the Cullen's past, suspected something off about them, why were they still here? Or was Charlie truly more like me than I'd ever thought – unable or unwilling to disclose their secrets because he saw the goodness in them? The irony wasn't lost on me; the fact that Charlie's acceptance came just as it was no longer necessary.

"Like I said, I don't pretend to understand your connection to them, but I know it's there. You love them, and they love you. I can hear that clear enough whenever I talk to them, or when you did."

Charlie seemed to be running out of words and that didn't surprise me. I didn't think I'd ever heard him use so many in one conversation before. Not one that wasn't with Billy Black about the Mariner's chances at least. He stood and walked back over to me, his hand squeezing my shoulder again.

"I was afraid, when Carlisle called and told me you were ill and staying there, that the time had come when you'd go with them, wherever it is they go when they move on. I'm happy that I was wrong about that, that I've got the chance to see you again. To tell you," he paused, the same emotion that had been clogging my throat earlier must have lodged in his, "to tell you I love you, Bells."

"Dad," I managed, but nothing else came out. I wanted to tell him that I wasn't going anywhere but back to Jacksonville to pack for college, that I'd come see him again at Christmas, that I wasn't ever going to go away with them because there was no chance of that happening now. All I could manage, though, was a whispered, "I love you."

Charlie left me then, giving me my privacy. And I did what I'd wanted to do since leaving the Cullen house. I curled into myself and cried for all I had gained, and everything I'd lost.


	11. Chapter 11

Interlude ~ Edward

She was gone. No matter how many times I tried to tell myself that this was the right thing, the only thing, I couldn't seem to move past that one, unassailable fact.

Bella was gone. She wasn't ever coming back.

I thought I had dealt with that a year ago, when I'd watched from the shadows as she boarded a plane to Jacksonville. I thought the pathways were set, coping mechanisms in place to move past the loss.

I was finding now, however, that my mind had never truly given up on the idea that she would find me, that she would come back and be a part of my life again. Because the pain now as I watched the endless chasm of my life without her stretch before me was more than I'd ever felt.

It kept me frozen in place, unable to move, unable to speak. Because if I did… If I took that first step, said that first word, it would start. The hell of my life without Bella. And I was cowardly enough to want to delay that as much and as long as possible.

"Has he moved yet?"

"Not so much as a twitch since I got back from taking her home, no."

"And you tried talking to him?"

"Emmett, if it were possible for me to lose my voice, I would have hours ago. He's not listening. Not even my thoughts are getting through."

Of course her thoughts were getting through. I was frozen, not dead. Well, not in that sense. Technically, I'd been dead for over ninety years. And I'd continue for another ninety, and another, and another. I watched it draw out in front of me, that endless path of "life."

From the moment I'd acknowledged my love for the frail human girl I had just begun to know, I saw very few possible paths. All of them led away from her toward a life of watching her, loving her, from afar. None of those grand intentions had come to pass, however. Bella had seen to that with her stubborn determination to disregard her own personal safety.

A determination I was only just now beginning to understand, to feel the depths to which she'd hold to a course once her decision was made.

It was ludicrous. The very idea that there was nothing more for us, that we would carry on our lives away from each other, that I could lose her over something as unimportant as sex was ludicrous.

Was it that unimportant, though? Was it really?

I thought back to how she felt in my arms while I kissed her, how it felt when she'd brushed against me – the shock of unanticipated pleasure through my unschooled body. Venom had welled in my mouth, yes, but that response had been secondary. For the first time in my endless existence, I'd felt another need beyond thirst. Another siren's call apart from the burning in my throat.

The need for her body had eclipsed the need for her blood. For any blood. I'd forgotten that I was a vampire. In that moment, I'd been as mortal as she – with a mortal man's need for the woman in his arms.

A need she'd felt as strongly as I had.

A need I could never satisfy for her. Not without dooming her, or killing her. Neither of which was an option.

Which left one course, and one course only. A life without her.

Barren. Empty. Endless.

"Emmett, what are you doing with that?"

My mother's voice reached me as I struggled with the grief, and pulled me from the abyss that stared into me just as I stared into it.

"If he's gone completely statue," I heard Emmett call out, much closer than I'd expected him to be, "might as well make him decorative."

The sheer absurdity of that statement forced my eyes to blink, my mind to focus.

And I realized I was still standing in my room, but I was now holding a large vase of fresh flowers.

"What the hell is this?" The words came out before I'd realized the paralyzing shock had finally broken.

"Well, well. Frankenstein's alive after all," Emmett grinned. "Shame. I was thinking you'd make a great addition to the living room."

Carefully, because both Esme and Alice would have my head if I ruined the arrangement, I set the vase down and turned to glare at my brother. He met my glare with the blasé face only Emmett could pull off.

"So. Planning on removing your head from your ass and going after her? Or are we in for an eternity of angst because you're a stubborn idiot without a clue?"

"Emmett," I growled in warning, body sinking into a half-crouch automatically. He copied my motion.

"Bring it, little brother. I've a mind to do a bit of damage after what you did earlier."

"And what," I ground out between clenched teeth, "did I do to you?"

"To me personally? Nothing. But you made Bella cry. And I dunno if you've noticed, but I protect my family, Edward. No one, not even you, makes one of my sisters cry and gets away without _some_ payback."

"She's not your sister, Em," I said, rising from my crouch, defeated. "She's gone."

"Only if you're stupid enough to not go after her," Emmett replied, smacking my shoulder and making me stumble. He watched me for a moment then sighed. "Which you're not going to do, are you?"

I couldn't answer, my body was trying to freeze up again from the pain. Emmett, naturally, was having none of that.

"So, now that you've given up your statue impersonation, you going to tell me just what the hell happened?"

"No, I'm not."

"Didn't think so, but it doesn't matter. We all heard it anyway. And may I be the first to call you a complete idiot? Honest to God, I've never known anyone more prone to fucking up his own happiness than you."

"Emmett," I growled, the only warning I was capable of issuing, ire rising in me again like molten lava.

"It's true, Edward and you know it. So does everyone else, even Bella. Always did think she was a smart little thing. I mean, really, Edward? What's the big deal?"

"What's the big deal?" I repeated, incredulous. "I could kill her. You of all people should understand the loss of control. For God's sake, you and Rose demolished whole houses. What do you think would happen..." I stopped. I couldn't even continue that thought. Warring images were erupting in my mind, Bella's body beneath mine, writhing in pleasure...and then still in death. A single motion. A single snap of control that was all it would take. Certainly this loss, losing her to save her, would be more bearable.

"So change her, as she said. Then you don't have to worry about killing her."

"And doom her to this? Take away her future, a normal human life? You've heard Rosalie go on about her dissatisfaction with our fate enough times to understand why that's not an option."

Emmett merely threw up his hands in frustration and crossed to the doorway. He stopped just outside the threshold to my room and turned back to me. "You know, Edward, either way you've lost her forever. Might want to think about that."

And then he was gone and I was alone again. As I would be, conceivably, for the rest of my existence.

Unless.

I'd spent a while, too long, curled up on the couch and crying out my heartache. It had taken hours but finally my eyes had run dry.

Then I'd sat up, wiped my cheeks, and started my life again. My life without him. Without Edward.

Eventually, I told myself, I'd be able to say that without the grief threatening to bear down and crush me again. It might take a while, but it would happen. I was determined on that point.

I decided to start slowly. Get back into normal routines. So while Charlie tinkered with his cruiser out front, where he'd gone to escape the overflow of female emotions, I searched the fridge and freezer, cobbling dinner together for us.

We ate that night in relative silence, Charlie watching me warily the entire time. I knew he was waiting for a return of the tears, but I knew he was safe. There were no more tears left.

But there was one thing I needed to do, to say.

"Dad," I began, pushing my hardly touched plate away from me. "I wanted...no, I have to...," I took a drink of water and continued, "I'm sorry. For how I left Forks last Spring."

"It's all—"

I cut Charlie off with a raised hand. "No, it's not all right. I said some rotten things that night," I paused, gathering my strength, "things I didn't mean."

Charlie set down his fork and looked at me across the table, my words that night ringing in the silence between us. "Why did you?"

"It's not important now," I mumbled, because it wasn't. Edward and his family had spirited me away that night to protect me, to protect Charlie. There would be no such interference, or a reason for it, again.

I fought to keep the darkness from overwhelming just as it had while I was trapped in the mist.

"I just wanted you to know that it wasn't true, what I said. I loved living here with you, Dad. And I was so glad that I'd had the chance to get to know you again. Really know you."

"Well, that's...that's nice of you, Bells," Charlie grumbled, his cheeks a little pink in his embarrassment from the praise.

I thought the conversation would end there. That Charlie, never comfortable with any sort of long discussions especially where feelings were involved, would beat a hasty retreat to the living room and whatever game was on. I was wrong.

He kicked back in his chair instead and leveled a look at me. For a moment, I saw the cop behind my father's eyes. "Why did you leave, Bella? What happened?"

I looked up at him. The words were actually forming in my mind, finding their way towards my lips – and for a fraction of a second I considered actually telling Charlie that I'd left because a sadistic vampire had been stalking me. But Charlie, by his own admission, didn't know exactly what the Cullens were, and I wasn't going to be the one to open that particular door. Even though my connection to them was now severed, I kept their secret. Charlie's suspicions were one thing, confirming them was quite another.

But I knew I couldn't lie either. So I stuck as close to the truth as I could.

I stuttered a bit as I told him the story, how an acquaintance of the Cullens had arrived while they were playing baseball and became instantly interested in me. Very interested, dangerously so. I told him that the Cullens had been afraid for me, because they'd known what the man was capable of; they wanted me far away. That we'd decided to get me out of Forks without delay for everyone's safety. I watched Charlie's face as I stumbled through the story and I could see him sifting through the details, washing it through the filters of his suspicions. And I could see something..not relief, not exactly, but satisfaction. The puzzle was solved, the questions answered.

My dad and I were a great deal alike in that way. We, neither of us, liked unanswered questions.

"And now you've remembered it all...," he said, his words trailing off.

"Yes, it's all back. Every day of my four months here," I said, the aching sadness of everything I'd gained and lost trying to creep back up my spine again. I thought, in that moment, that the dream me had the right of it. I remembered everything – and that memory had done nothing but bring more pain.

"And the Cullens…." This time his trailing comment was more of a question.

I shook my head. "That part of my life is over now," I replied, amazed that I was able to get the words out around the pain lashing through me.

Charlie's brow furrowed. "I don't understand. After all, after everything…that doesn't make sense, Bells."

"It's true," I said softly, taking a deep breath in, "Edward…didn't want me enough to keep me with him. With his family." The traitor tears were welling in my eyes and I knew I'd have to escape soon or risk subjecting Charlie to another round of female emotions run amok. "Dad. I can't…I can't talk about this yet."

Charlie obviously sensed the impending storm, evidenced by the twin tracks of moisture running down my face, and merely nodded. He pushed back from the table and walked around to where I sat. His hand fell on my shoulder with a light squeeze. "I don't believe that, Bells. Whatever else he is, he's in love with you. Might have been a while, but I recognize that look well enough."

Without another word, Charlie left the kitchen. A few seconds later I heard the front door open and Charlie call back to me that he was going down to LaPush to watch the game with Harry and Billy. The names rang dim bells in my returned memories, my dad's best friends at the nearby reservation, but I didn't dwell on them. I didn't have enough room in my mind for my problems, much less my father's social circle.

Slowly, I made my way up to my room. My legs felt like lead and were shaking by the time I got there. I collapsed onto my bed, waiting for the grief to find me again. But there were no tears this time, I simply pulled my pillow in close to my body and held onto it tight.

"He's right, you know."

The pillow flew out of my arms and across the room as I spun around in shock. My jaw dropped open just as my heart leapt into a dead sprint.

Edward was standing at my window.

Just as it had been in the forest when I'd run from him, every instinct in my body screamed at me to go to him, to hold him and never let go. I couldn't, though. He was here, but it changed nothing. I had to dig my hands into the comforter to keep them from shaking, to keep myself from moving.

It took everything I had left to speak the words I had to say. "Go away, Edward."

"I'm sorry, Bella, I can't do that."

His simple denial shook me to the core. He had to leave, didn't he see that? Couldn't he tell I was barely hanging on?

"You have to. You _have_ to," I said, my voice rising on every word, almost breaking at the end.

"I can't. I told myself I would, that the future stretching before me was the right one, even though it was a dark, barren place. But I can't do it, Bella. I've tried to live without you, even knowing you were safe, relatively happy, I found no comfort in that. The ache of missing you was too great. And now that you've returned, that I've had you in my arms again, I find myself utterly unable to let you go so easily."

It took everything I had to steel myself against his hypnotic words, even going so far as to fist my hands so tightly my fingernails left impressions on my palms. "That's a very pretty speech, Edward, but it changes nothing. I _know_ you love me, just as I love you and I always will. But unless you've changed your..."

I broke off, staring at him in disbelief. " _Did_ you change your mind?"

"Not exactly," he said softly and my anger rose again, quick and intense. How dare he come here and wipe away the small progress I'd been able to make? Angered tears pricked my eyelids, threatening to spill from my cheeks.

"Then I repeat, get out, Edward. I meant what I said earlier. There is no way for this to work unless we can be together, really together."

He was shaking his head and that only angered me further. I felt my hands start to shake and the tears that had welled almost to the point of blinding me spilled over and down my cheeks.

"Do you know why I lost my memories, Edward?" I didn't give him time to answer, I simply plunged on without even taking a breath. "I had a lot of time to think about it today while I wished my memories had never come back. I think I knew, deep down, that it would come to this. That you wouldn't keep me. That's the pain I was guarding myself against. This pain. This..."

My momentum gave out then, so did the anger. It was as if I had purged the last of me, leaving behind nothing but an empty shell. I dropped onto my bed, put my head in my hands, and found the strength for two more words.

"Please leave."

He didn't leave, though. He only moved closer. Closer. Closer. I could feel his cold breath on my face, feel his solid presence in front of me. "Bella, please look at me."

I couldn't. I knew if I pulled my hands away from my face, if I met his dark eyes I would lose myself forever in them, that I'd give him anything just to still be near him. Childishly, I shook my head.

"All right then. If you won't look at me, will you at least listen?"

I debated that for a moment. It was risky, letting him speak, letting his cool, seductive breath wash over me and wipe away all of my resolve. I wanted desperately to shake my head again, to speak my 'No' loud and clear, with no hesitation in my voice. But as always, his voice held me spellbound and all I could do was nod.

"I thought it would be like it was, Bella, like when you left a year ago for Jacksonville with your mother. I thought my conviction that I was doing the right thing would sustain me now as it had then. I thought wrong. I must have harbored some hope that you would return to me in some form back then, because the chasm that opened before me today was filled with pain like I'd ever felt before."

His hands reached up to take my hands away from my face and he didn't have to exert much pressure to do so. What he'd said already had my bones nearly liquefied. "I once thought I could be strong enough to walk away, if that's what was best. But I know now that I'm not. I'm not, Bella. But maybe," his voice dropped to a whisper, "maybe I'm strong enough for this."

His lips were on mine then. Before I could blink, before I could try to move away. And then, I didn't want to move. I just wanted more. As it had been on his sofa, this kiss was new, different, much more intense than any he'd ever given me.

Slowly, and without moving his lips from mine, Edward rose and moved me backwards, pressing me into the mattress, his stone body covering me. I whimpered into his mouth, but when he attempted to move away, my arms locked around his neck. "No," I panted, "that was a good sound. I like the way this feels."

"As do I, Bella. Very much. Too much."

I looked into his eyes, worry in mine. Had I really given in so easily? Of course I had. When had I ever been able to think clearly when he was near me, much less when he was kissing me? My thoughts must have been clear in my face, because he leaned his head down at once and kissed the frown line between my eyebrows.

"I'll admit to being scared, Bella. Terrified. I don't want to hurt you, I've never wanted that. At the same time, I can't knowingly stand back and let you leave me. It will take me some time, to work up to being…to being that close to you. To build my control. That's what I meant when I said I hadn't exactly changed my mind. Can you give me that time, to ease into being close to you this way?"

My eyes searched for his and I was shocked at first to find his image blurred. Then I blinked. The tears fell down my cheeks just as his face became clear again. "Oh, Edward," I sighed, raising one hand to bury deep into his hair, "as long as I know it's possible, yes, I can wait." A blush colored my cheeks and I had to focus on his forehead to continue, "We can go slowly, try other…other things, work up to it, you know?"

He chuckled then, but there was no laughter in his eyes. They were dark with intent as that idea was turned over in his mind. He shifted above me and I gasped when I felt the hard ridge of him pressed against my thigh. There was no shock this time, no uneasiness, just a return of the same spreading heat I'd felt in his bedroom.

There was also no answering stillness in Edward. Instead he moved slightly, arched his hips experimentally, and brushed against my very center. I nearly bucked straight off the bed as the heat turned to fire with just that one touch.

"Edward!" I gasped his name and he cast worried eyes down toward me. I tried to smile, but I was almost too far gone to manage even that much. "Good. Feels. So good." Instinctively, I raised my hips to mimic his motion, trying to emphasize my words with my actions.

I must have been successful, because this time, we groaned together in mutual pleasure.

Edward's hands were everywhere. I barely had time to register the cold touch of his fingers against my stomach, my breasts, my legs, before he'd moved on again. I heard a soft growl, almost frustrated, before the sound of ripping fabric filled the silence in my room. The rush of cool air felt good against my overheated skin and then it was replaced by something infinitely colder. And more glorious.

The rational part of my mind, the very small part still capable of thought in the onslaught of touches and kisses, knew that this could end at any moment. Knew it and was prepared for it. The rest was given over to sensation alone.

Then Edward went still as a statue above me. I managed to wrench open my eyes, to look into his dark pupils and the wonder and uncertainty on his face. "Wha-," I had to stop and start again when I found my voice, "what's wrong?"

"Nothing," he said and for the first time his voice wasn't velvety or musical. It was rough, hoarse, threaded through with the desire I saw in his eyes. "I should stop, Bella. I should…but I don't know if I can." His last words were drowned out as his lips continued to kiss along my neck and shoulder. "I know I don't want to," he added in a gruff whisper at my ear.

"Then don't," I managed through panting breaths, my arms coming up to lock around his neck, trying to hold him to me.

"Promise me," he said at last, his lips trailing a line of cold fire across my collarbone, then down along my breastbone. It felt like my heart would stop beating at any moment from the burn of need coursing through me.

"Promise me," he repeated. "If I hurt you in any way, stop me at once."

"I promis-," I couldn't even finish the word, because in that second, Edward's head lowered and his cold mouth covered my breast and I felt his icy tongue flick against my already distended nipple. I had to work to bite back the scream of pleasure, terrified he'd take it the wrong way and stop. I never wanted him to stop. I wanted to feel this, feel it with him, into forever.

Edward seemed to share my thoughts on the subject, because he took an inordinate amount of time before shifting his talented mouth to my left breast and subjecting me to the same torture all over again. I had no more ability to speak, my only vocalizations coming in sharp pants, deep moans and soft keening as I writhed beneath him.

"You are so beautiful, Bella."

There was a soft whimper in the room when his mouth began kissing its way up my chest, along my collarbone, soft, open mouthed kisses pressing to every inch of skin as he passed over it. It wasn't until the noise came again that I realized I was whimpering. Every time his lips left my skin, I thought for sure that that would be it. That our experiment would be finished. I reminded myself that this was what I'd agreed to, that the aching pit in my stomach would go away…

And then my pep talk became a moot point. Edward didn't leave, he didn't shift away from me. Instead, he met my eyes, shifted his hand, and brushed my core with the tip of his erection. Wildfire bloomed through me again, igniting my nerve endings and setting my heart racing at impossible speeds.

I could only manage one word. "Please."

I would never know if it was my words, my bucking hips rising to meet him, or his own long-denied desires, but Edward gave in. With one motion, with his eyes still locked wonderingly on mine, he closed the last distance between us and thrust himself deep inside me.

I'd been told of pain, or at least I'd overheard that. But there was nothing. No pain, no discomfort. All I felt was him, all I knew was his body joined to mine, all I could reconcile was the sense of utter completeness. I didn't think there could ever be a more perfect moment.

Then his body started to move against mine and he proved me quite wrong.

I was making sounds again, moaning into Edward's mouth when he kissed me, letting my soft keening fill the room when his lips were elsewhere on my face or neck. He seemed to have picked up the pattern of my sounds and didn't tense. He only asked once, checked to be utterly certain he wasn't hurting me. As I'd been unable to speak, all I could do was look up into his dark eyes and try to let everything I was feeling shine through them. It must have worked because his pace increased, his hips moving against me harder, deeper than before.

Acting on instinct, I raised my legs and wrapped them firmly around his hips, holding him tight to me, unwilling to let him go. As I did so, the pleasure radiating through me changed, shifted, heat became tension, curling itself into a ball in the pit of my stomach. There was urgency now, a frantic need for…something. Something I didn't understand. Something I was reaching for, something only Edward could help me find.

"Please," I moaned against his shoulder, not even knowing what I was asking for. He seemed to understand, though, because he moved against me with even more ferocity than before, arching his hips hard into mine, his lips fastened over mine, kissing the very breath from my body.

Before I'd managed to truly understand the tension within me, light suddenly burst behind my closed eyelids. There was pain, pleasure, need, release, and joy wrapped up in the light that surrounded me, that clenched my muscles around him and drew from him the same release he'd wrenched from me. I felt him stiffen above me, felt his body shudder as mine had, and heard my name fall from his lips like the sweetest music.

And then I knew no more.

Interlude ~ Edward

There were no words. In all I had read, in all I had experienced through the thoughts of others…nothing had prepared me for the moment Bella became truly mine. A complete extension of my body as she'd been an extension of my heart since the first time I'd come to this room.

The pleasure of my release was still shuddering through me, each motion of my body set off another round of aftershocks. I rested my weight on my bent arms, elbows and knees holding the majority of my weight off of her so as not to crush her, my lips raining kisses over her forehead and jaw, trying to regain my ability to form words. Were there any words for such a moment?

Her soft, warm breath caressed my cold cheek as she panted beneath me, small moans still issuing from her mouth. I chuckled and kissed her forehead again. In spite of the odds, we'd made it. Together. One. As we would be now through the rest of her life. We would find ways around our differing ages, living apart from society if need be. But we had years to resolve those issues. Years and years. I was certain we could come up with something plausible.

I'd thought I could abide by our compromise. I knew when I'd come here that I would be facing temptations the likes of which I'd never been faced with before, but I thought myself equal to them. I thought if we moved slowly, testing the water for potential rip currents first, that we could eventually reach where we were now. Just as I'd inured myself to her blood when I first met her. I should have known it wouldn't happen that way – that once I'd started to know her intimately, only her pain or her resistance would have been able to stop me. Bella had shown neither. Maybe it was the shock of new sensations that had kept my strength in check, maybe the time my mind spent experiencing and analyzing each new touch; whichever it was, it had not been the struggle I'd anticipated. Being with Bella this way, making love to her, was almost natural, instinctual, and more magnificent than I could have ever dreamed.

I closed my eyes, wishing with everything I had that I could breathe in the room around me, taste it with all of my senses. That wasn't possible now, however. The room was most likely still saturated with the smell of her blood. Of course it would be, Bella had been a virgin just as I had been. It was common knowledge that the breaking of her maidenhead would cause her pain, and a little blood. The scent had hit me when her legs had raised to hold me to her, just as I felt her body begin to spasm beneath mine.

I swallowed the venom that had pooled in my mouth at the memory just as Bella begin to writhe beneath me again, another moan, louder this time, escaping her lips.

"Bella? Bella, what is it?"

She didn't answer, her lips were pressed in a firm line, her whole body starting to shudder. I could feel her hands clenching into fists against my back. My own shook as well, doubt and fear clawing their way up my spine. Had I injured her, broken bones or organs that weren't visible to my eyes?

I was about to start probing her skin for damage when I heard it. It was a sound I'd heard three times before in my lifetime, one that made no sense and had no reason here. The frenetic beat of a changing heart.

Instantly I sprang back from her, panic threatening to shut me down again. Had I…God, had I bitten her? I scanned every inch of her body that my mouth could have possibly touched and found nothing. Then her head fell to the side and I saw it. Two rough, red scratches just under her jawline – deep enough to have broken the skin. Two marks that could only have been made by my teeth. My razor sharp, venom coated teeth.

"Oh God, Bella, no!"

But it was too late. In the seconds I'd taken to revel in the wonder of our joining, I'd lost my opportunity to reverse my own actions.

In my selfishness, I'd doomed her to a life of night.

I barely noticed when my father's hand laid gently on my shoulder.

"We have to move, son. Alice says Charlie will be home in less than an hour." I moved like an automaton when he helped me dress myself, dress Bella, and carry her home. Away from her father, her family, her life, from everything I'd stolen in my most self-centered moment.


	12. Chapter 12

_Interlude ~ Edward_

She was too still.

I had watched Esme's transformation, and Rosalie's, and Emmett's; and those days were as clear in my memory as if they'd taken place the day before rather than decades before. With each there had been thrashing, screaming, and pleas for death as the venom burned its way through their bodies. I'd heard their thoughts as their systems were slowly poisoned, listened as their minds came to accept what they were becoming.

For all I could tell from looking at Bella, however, she could have been sleeping. Her mind was as silent to me as it had always been, but her body told no story either. True, her heart beneath her chest beat frantically and her breath came in labored pants and gasps, but that was no different from the nightmares she occasionally suffered. The not-knowing was nearly as unbearable as the dread over what would happen when she woke; anticipating her fury and/or distress that I'd stolen her life and her future as well as subjected her to maddening pain.

"Edward?"

I turned my head towards the door and growled. There was a pause at the door and then the sound of retreating footsteps as Carlisle moved off, back downstairs. Every few hours one member of my family would attempt to intrude, or as Alice had put it the first time, "talk sense into me," but I was having none of it.

They would try to comfort where no comfort was warranted. They would tell me it was inevitable anyway, when they were wrong. They would, if they were Alice, be too busy planning futures to see that the true future had been stripped away by my selfishness.

"Bella, I'm sorry," I muttered softly, hoping for some reaction. I wanted her to scream, to rail at me as the monster I was. I expected that. Even gentle Esme hadn't gone quietly into her new life, and Rosalie had been, of course, a hundred times worse.

Her continued silence gave me too much time to think. To remember.

And my perfected vampire mind had preserved every moment in chilling, vivid detail. When I closed my eyes, I could see it all. Separate myself from the emotion and pleasure to see every mistake, every misstep.

Who was I kidding? Every step I'd taken from the moment I arrived at her window three nights ago had been a mistake, a tragedy in the making.

I should never have gone to her.

I should never have kissed her.

I should have stopped when I felt myself losing control.

I should have hunted before setting a foot near her house.

I should have locked my jaws, not given into the temptation of her warm, soft, and fragrant skin.

I should have stayed away from her, I should have been stronger.

"I'm sorry I wasn't strong enough to save you, Bella."

"Oh, for fuck's sake!"

The voice was so jarring, so loud, I actually jumped.

I braced myself for Emmett's latest attempt at "comfort." He'd tried several times, stopping just outside the closed door of my bedroom to talk to me. He'd tried, Alice, Esme, Carlisle, even Jasper.

Rosalie, of course, had said nothing. I'd heard enough of her thoughts within a second of touching her mind to know that there would be no attempt at comfort from her. She was too busy smugly waiting for me to get what she thought of as my "just desserts," knowing just how robbed Bella would feel when she finally awoke.

I hadn't gone near Rosalie's thoughts since that first glimpse. I already knew she was right.

Her husband's thundering footfalls called me back to the present, shaking the very walls as he approached. I gritted my teeth for the rumble of his fist against the wood frame of my door.

The rumble never came, however. This time it was a full fledged earthquake as Emmett pounded the door hard enough for it to swing open with a crash.

"Will you get the fuck over it already?"

I came as close as I'd been in days to leaving Bella's side and my temper rose to flashpoint in seconds. I bared my teeth just as a snarl ripped itself free from my throat. "Bella is suffering, you stupid ass," I growled. "Suffering because I was right, because I should have stayed away from her, because I was so fucking selfish I couldn't put her life before my own wants."

Emmett's mouth worked like a fish out of water and I could hear his thoughts as if he screamed them. I could also hear him when he realized such comments were going to get him nowhere. Finally, he seemed to come to a decision. He had one thing he needed to say, no matter how pointless he knew it was.

"Look, so you changed her. So what? Now you get to spend the eternity you've gone on and on about with the woman you love? I'm sorry, Edward, but I'm not seeing the downside here."

I snarled again, wishing I could rip him into pieces without risking Rosalie's wrath being visited on me for the next hundred years. "I've stolen her life. She's eighteen years old, Emmett. She should be going to college, marrying, having a family, a normal human life. Growing old with that family," I added, choosing the part that Rose went on about ad nauseum to make my point. "God knows you've heard Rose go on about being denied that enough to understand it. I didn't want this for her."

I'd expected anger from my brother, or at the very least a spark of temper. I hadn't been prepared for him to simply sigh, run a hand through his hair, and turn to leave the room.

"There's one thing you're forgetting, Edward," he said from the doorway. "Rose never chose this life. Bella did. Think about that while you're beating yourself up."

He paused and took a deep breath then cut his eyes to the sofa where Bella lay, still and silent as death. "You've got your hands full with this one, Bella. Hope everlasting angst does it for you, because that's what you've got in store when you wake up."

"Go away, Emmett."

Surprisingly, he listened and turned to leave. I couldn't stop myself from yelling after his retreating back. "You're not helping anything by…" I broke off when Bella's head moved. It wasn't much, just one small shake.

"Stop yelling. You're brothers, you should be nicer to each other."

I never knew how long it took me to realize that the warmth filling me in the immediate aftermath of making love to Edward had nothing to do with my emotional state. I remembered that it wasn't an immediate thing, that I could feel his cold skin covering mine, could feel goosebumps prickle along my skin as his cold warred with the heat rising inside me.

I remembered, vaguely, Carlisle's voice and a brief unease at being caught in such a position; undressed in front of my boyfriend's father having just had sex with that boyfriend. But that was the moment the warmth became heat, the pleasant became unbearable, and the sighs tried to become screams.

And I very much wanted to scream. Every pain I'd ever endured in my 18 years of complete clumsiness didn't come close to matching the agony that was trying to rip through me; even the agony of James snapping my bone in his hand was nothing. I searched for a way around it, a way to think past the torture. That's when I found it, the quiet cool mist of my dream. My dream self.

The one who shielded me from pain.

I found her there as the screams threatened to rip themselves free of my throat. Found her, embraced her, and let her take me away yet again.

It was Edward who brought me back. As it had always been, as it would always be. His voice, his presence, were the ties that bound me, just as I was the tether that held him. His voice penetrated the sensory deprivation of my shielded mind, but I couldn't hear the words, just the cadence and music of his voice.

My other senses returned, sharpened, as my consciousness returned and I let the shield dissipate. I became aware of the lessening of the venom burn, aware of Edward's hand on mine, aware of the sweet perfume of his breath as he spoke to me.

Just as the venom's hold on me broke, as I stepped free of the shield that protected me, I realized I was able to hear words. Not just the vibration of his voice, but the words he spoke.

At first, all I could focus on was the sound. I heard his voice as I never had before, clear, crisp, the most beautiful symphony ever played. But when his words broke through my wonder, when I realized what his musical voice was saying, I frowned.

"Stop yelling. You're brothers, you should be nicer to each other."

Whatever I'd intended to say was lost as my eyes opened and focused, when I realized that the ringing, musical voice I heard was mine. And then I went completely speechless, every thought gone from my mind as my eyes found and held Edward's face.

I had thought him beautiful, unbearably beautiful when I'd first seen him, a thought that had only intensified as time had gone on and I grew to know him better. I didn't think I was wrong, exactly, but as I looked at him with my new, sharper eyes, I thought beautiful might just be the biggest understatement I'd ever made.

"Bella?" Edward's voice called me back from my reverie, from the parts of my mind wondering over Edward and the changes in my own perceptions of other things about me. I knew their minds, our minds, worked differently, worked faster than those of humans. Now I knew just how differently. It was difficult to focus on one thing; every time I tried a new sense or touch or smell would pull my thoughts off in a different direction. It was getting frustrating. I didn't want to think about how the air tasted, about the muttering downstairs, about the whooshing of cars on the highway miles away. I wanted to focus on Edward.

"Bella, I'm sorry."

My shock at his words helped that focus more than anything else could have. My eyes widened and flew to his, confusion all over my face.

"For what?" I asked.

"For what happened, for forcing this on you, for forcing you to give up everything, for the pain you just endured…"

I held up a hand to stop his tirade. As the apologies started almost immediately, I knew that he'd been storing them up for a while – since his teeth had first grazed my neck? Possibly.

I looked into his dark eyes and sighed. No possibly about it. But something in his tirade of apologies stuck out in my clearer mind. Stuck out because it was unexpected.

"You're sorry you changed me?"

"Yes," he said softly.

I could see his mouth open to continue, but I was already on my feet. I'd heard more than just that one word response; I'd heard something else, a memory from my burning. Just as it had been when my lost memories had started to return, I heard his voice clear in my mind.

 _I didn't want this._

I stood staring at him, my mouth working and strange prickling at the corners of my eyes. He didn't want this?

It was almost as difficult as when my memories had been blocked, this looking back to my human life. The memories were there but murky, like the camera had been out of focus. The voices were audible, but sounded more like a radio out of tune. Despite this, the gist of it was clear enough.

Edward had told me he wouldn't change me.

My new, vampire mind had no problem comparing that memory to the overheard comment while I burned.

Had I been right all along? Had he wanted me but not forever? Was that the real reason behind his reluctance to change me, behind his regret that it had happened? My mind spun out in several different directions, each weaving its own reasons for why he wouldn't be happy I'd become a vampire, and each reason ended with the same conclusions.

I was a vampire now. There was no going back.

Edward didn't want it. Didn't want me. Was sorry I was turned.

I couldn't get beyond that last truth. And I couldn't stay here now that I'd acknowledged it. I wouldn't stay where I wasn't wanted.

My body swallowed the lump of emotion trying to wedge itself in my throat.

And then, because I didn't have enough pressing on me in that moment, the act of swallowing had awakened a part of me I hadn't registered yet.

Thirst.

Now that my mind acknowledged it, there was no denying the pain of it, so like the venom burn, but different at the same time. Confused, I gasped and reached up to clutch at my throat, my eyes flying to Edward's automatically.

I was surprised to see him still standing where he'd been when I'd first risen from the table; still standing there, and with the same expression on his face. How much time had passed since I'd spoken? A minute? A second? An hour? I had no way of knowing, but as the flames erupted in my throat, I knew that my questions would have to wait.

Right now I had only two needs, and they were rapidly becoming the twin centers of my world: I needed to get away from Edward, and I needed to put out the fire in my throat.

My head whipped around violently, trying to find some way, any way, to achieve both needs as quickly as I could. Finding no easy escape within the confines of his room, I took the only option available to me.

I barely registered Edward's cry of "Bella, no!" before I ran across his room and straight through the window that looked out onto the back lawn and the trees beyond. I didn't think of the breaking glass, I didn't think of the two story drop, until both were behind me. I landed on the soft grass and looked down at my arms and legs. My clothes were ripped, the t-shirt I'd been put in now showing big tears, but apart from that, I bore no indication that I'd just jumped twenty-odd feet through a pane of glass.

In that moment, I was able to forget Edward entirely. Freed from the confines of his room and faced with no barriers save my own stamina, I didn't stop when my feet hit the grassy carpet of the Cullen's back lawn.

I ran. And it was glorious.

I had never enjoyed anything physical. But this was... This was beyond words. The trees flew past me, clearer than they should be for my velocity, but my feet were nimble as they moved. I felt the uneven forest floor beneath them, felt rocks and twigs as well as moss and leaves, but none of that slowed my progress. No roots sprang up to tangle beneath me and send me sprawling to the ground. When the roots appeared, I saw them in plenty of time to choose a different direction.

Elated beyond anything I'd ever felt before, I couldn't help the laughter that bubbled up from my throat. I heard it bounce off the flora surrounding me and in that moment, even running wasn't enough to contain my exhilaration. I took one more step, planting my foot this time, and jumped. My eyes widened as I almost flew through the air, landing finally in the upper branches of a fir tree. I was still laughing as I clung to the branches and looked below me at the forest floor.

I laughed at muscles that weren't protesting the sudden use, I laughed at lungs that were not panting from unfamiliar aerobic exercise, I laughed and laughed until I realized that my eyes were prickling and my shoulders were shaking – my laughter had turned to tears, or whatever the vampire equivalent was. I was shuddering with tearless sobs, my anguish echoing off the same trees that had bounced back my laughter mere seconds before.

How could I feel elation and desolation in the same breath? How could my mind, so much more focused than it had ever been before, be so completely messed up that I didn't know _what_ I was feeling from one minute to the next?

I dropped my head into my hands and tried to hold in the shaking sobs that felt so wrong without tears to cleanse the sadness away, I tried to find the happiness that had filled me so completely just moments ago.

I tried…

 _Snap!_

My body went rigid, my entire being on alert. Then I heard it, the soft, wet thudding beneath my perch on the tree. The sound was appealing; the steady beat of a large heart nearby. The flames in my throat, muted during my emotional upheaval, burned hotter than ever, wiping out every other thought, every other need, until there was only one thing to do. I closed my eyes and listened to my body, letting it lead me now as it had when I'd first landed in the forest.

I crouched low on my branch, eyes searching the undergrowth, listening for any hint of where relief was. One snapped twig was all it took. My head whipped to the side and I leapt from the tree in the same second, my body soaring towards my prey and landing neatly on its back. The buck barely had time to register my presence before my hands and mouth found his neck. Instinctively, my teeth went straight for the spot where the blood flow concentrated. And bit in.

Unprepared as I was for the sudden rush of fluid into my mouth, I gagged at first. But that only lost me a precious few swallows of the warm, wet blood. I couldn't say it tasted good, but it wasn't altogether unpleasant either. It was wet and it cooled the flames in my throat. In that moment, nothing else mattered.

Before my thirst was even remotely quenched, the animal beneath me ran dry. A growl of frustration ripped from my throat and I sprang to my feet in a lithe, fluid motion as I pushed its carcass from me. Grace was another thing I was going to have to grow accustomed to, apparently. I wondered idly what it would be like to never trip again and smiled as a laugh bubbled up again.

I heard it then, another snap of a twig, to my left this time, and I was off before half a second had passed. I sprang without thinking, letting my senses lead me. If the sound had been further away, I would have lost my quarry altogether because there was nothing else to guide me save that single snapping twig. No heartbeat thudding, no scent of deep, rich blood.

If I'd stopped to think, I probably would have been less likely to spring.

But I didn't think, and I did spring.

The next thing I knew, Edward lay beneath me, pinned to the forest floor, eyes wide while I growled in frustration at being denied relief from the burning ache in my throat.

"Bella?"

I would never know what pulled me from the depths of a hunting frenzy; his voice, his face, his scent, or the myriad of memories that accompanied his use of my name. Whichever it was, the spell was broken. I leaned back and looked into his eyes, that same prickling returning to mine.

I felt his warm hand on my arm, smooth fingers on the inside of my wrist, gentle pressure as he tangled our fingers together.

"Bella."

Just as it had before, memories came back to me in a rush. There was no pain attached this time, however, no confusing rush. My mind was more able to deal with the onslaught, even though the images were murky and out of focus.

The pictures were fuzzy, the voices muted, but the overall tenor was the same. This was the man I loved more than anything, this was the man who'd pledged to love me the same. I'd wanted forever, an eternity, with him, he had wanted only the span of my human life.

"Why?" I asked, my voice clear as a wind chime in a soft breeze.

"Why what?" he asked softly, his body still beneath mine.

"Why are you sorry you changed me?"

"Bella…"

"No," I said sharply, cutting him off with a glare. "You said it, I heard you. While I was…I heard you tell Emmett you didn't want this for me. Then I asked and you said yes, you were sorry. Why? Is it because you didn't want me forever?"

His eyes widened, his entire body going rigid for the briefest of spans before I felt him relax. I watched as a smile slowly spread across his face. "Is that what you think, Bella?"

I was shocked when he laughed – a true laugh, the type I hadn't heard from him in what felt like forever – and then looked into my eyes, his familiar crooked smile curving his lips. "Bella, you are so absurd."

My anger flared again, immediate and deadly, my eyes narrowing to slits. I could feel the snarl ripping its way free of my chest, bubbling up my throat like noxious gas. Then Edward's hand rose and he touched my cheek. Touched it, cupped it, held my face in his hand while his thumb caressed the apple of my cheek. Just as quickly as it had flared to life, my anger died in the warmth of his touch, the silk of his voice. "My beautiful Bella, how could I not be beyond thrilled that I'll never have to lose you? But at the same time I've robbed you of your future, the life you should have had. How can I be happy that my selfishness has cost you everything?"

"Edward," I said softly, raising my own hand to cover his. I had memories of this, I knew I did. Vague ones covered in the veil of my human eyes. "From the moment I saw you," I paused there, because that wasn't entirely true and I wanted this moment to be made of absolute truth. "No. From the moment you first took me to that meadow. When we talked, when you touched me, and I touched you, when you explained everything to me, I knew one thing with absolute certainty. I knew it would cause me physical pain to be separated from you. A fact that has been proven over, and over, and over again. There is nothing," I took both of his hands in mine and squeezed, "nothing I want more than what I have now. I lost you once. I don't think I'd survive losing you again."

The smile on my face froze when I realized Edward's face had contorted into a grimace, into a face I'd never seen before. It almost looked as if he was…in pain?

"Edward?"

He eased his hands from mine and shook them. "Careful, Bella."

I felt my eyebrows contract again. "What do you mean, careful? You're a vampire, it's not like I could hurt you."

The pain in his face left in an instant, replaced by a smile bright enough to light the entire Olympic Peninsula. "Actually, you can. You're a newborn, Bella. You're much, much stronger than the rest of us, and will be for at least the next year."

I took almost a whole minute to process that. "Stronger than…you? Than Emmett?" Another wide grin crossed my face, mischief twinkling in my eyes. "Think of the fun I can have with that."

Edward blinked up at me, looking more surprised than if I'd suddenly sprouted antlers.

"What?"

"You. I…I don't understand your reaction. You're not angry, you're not upset. I thought you'd...have at least some of that. Some sense of loss. Your friends? Your family? I've…Bella, I've taken that away from you, too."

I sighed and reached out to his cheek, stroking his skin, marveling at the warmth of it for a second before forcing my mind to refocus. "I'm going to miss them, Edward. I'll miss my parents and yes, I plan to spend time mourning them, too. But Charlie…Charlie will understand and Renee? Well, Renee's never had any problem making the decisions that are best for her. So how can she…"

I broke off then, shifting my fingers to cover Edward's lips when he moved to speak. My eyes found his as thirst ripped to life in my throat once again. The scent of the animals near us wasn't the most appetizing, but their heartbeats promised warmth, wet, something to ease the fire burning in my throat.

"Why am I still so thirsty?" I asked him, my voice a whisper my human ears would have never heard.

"Because you're new, Bella. Do you…do you need help?"

I shook my head, remembering the deer I took down earlier. "No." I sprang to my feet in a lightning movement, one that a human would never have registered. I held out my hand and smiled. "But I would like the company."

We spent the afternoon in the forest. Hunting when prey crossed our path, laughing as I discovered all the things my new body could do. Running, leaping, climbing. I was amazed to find myself easing into my new vampire body as comfortably as if it was an old pair of slippers found pushed under a bed. Where I had always felt graceless and awkward, I now simply felt whole and right.

As if this was how I was meant to be all along, I just had to find the right path to get here.

We had been running the forest for what must've been hours (the sky overhead was filled with stars rather than the clouds from earlier) when I stopped abruptly. Edward was standing in the middle of a field. He was watching me as I ran and jumped, testing my new body to see what I could do.

He was watching. And laughing.

I tried to remember, sifting though the muck and mire of my human memories to see if this sound was familiar to me. It wasn't. In all the time I'd known Edward, and I thought I'd known him better than myself, I'd never seen this level of joy on his beautiful face. I'd never heard his voice so carefree and easy. I smiled in return.

"Do you know where we are, Bella?" he asked softly, though he was easily fifty yards away.

"Should I?" I answered back in the same normal voice, turning my body to face him completely.

"Look around. It was daylight the last time you were here. The sun was shining."

I did look then, my sharp eyes taking in the grassy field, the surrounding trees. Did it look familiar? I thought it did. The darkness shaded nothing from these eyes, it merely robbed the flora of color, turning everything differing shades of gray. I closed my eyes and tried to envision the area in the light of a sunny day.

I gasped when it hit me, when I realized just where I was. "This is our meadow."

"Yes, it is," Edward said, his voice a whisper now as he was directly in front of me. I'd seen him approach, watched every step of his progress that would have been only a blur before.

My arms were already raised to greet him, to enfold him, to pull him close. "The last time we were here," I said softly, my voice a little breathless, "you showed me the speed, and the strength. You showed me why you," I stopped and corrected myself, "why we have to stay hidden. Then you took me home and told me that night that a physical relationship wasn't possible for us."

His eyes darkened for a moment. "And I was r-"

I cut him off with a finger to his lips. "You were right in one sense. You lost a second's worth of control and now." I smiled into his eyes. "Now I need to know one very important thing."

"What's that?" he asked, his voice low and grave.

Because I'd been so focused on that night in my bed at Charlie's house, I knew the words without having to search for them. "Do I appeal to you…that way?"

Edward hesitated a second. A long, full second, and then his hand was in my hair and his arms drew me to him. Warm lips pressed to mine and I was lost.

I thought I'd been pretty well attuned to Edward's kisses, that I knew every way his lips could touch and caress mine. I was very, very wrong. When his mouth crashed onto mine, the explosion was immediate and intense, nearly rocking me off my feet.

Where my lips had once yielded under the strength of his, they now fought back, giving as much as they took. Our hands moved with lightning speed, human movements not enough for either of us. Twin growls of frustration issued from both our throats as we were thwarted from skin contact by our clothes. The sounds of ripping replaced the growls as our fingers worked to free our bodies.

"Yesss," I hissed when my fingers finally found the soft, warm skin of his stomach. "Edward."

"Does that answer your question?" he asked, his voice a rough growl in my ear.

"Not entirely," I gasped back, sliding my hand from his stomach to encircle his erection in my hand. "But there's a way that might convince me."

"Oh God, Bella," he groaned. A second later he'd rolled us until he towered over me, his eyes boring into mine. I arched under his hands and mouth, my back coming clear off the ground when his lips and tongue closed over my breast, when his teeth tugged my nipple deep inside his mouth. Gone were the hesitant and tentative touches from my bedroom; this was an Edward free to take what he wanted, and me free to give right back.

My soft moans mixed with his groaning as our hands roamed and stroked, touching and driving each other with our mutual need and growing desires until finally, it was too much. My legs rose and wrapped around his hips, arching my body into his.

"Edward, please," I gasped against his throat.

It was all the encouragement he needed. In one twist of his hips, he thrust deep, not stopping until his cock was buried to the hilt within me. My head pressed back into the soft grass as he filled me completely. We lay that way for a full minute, our eyes locked together. Then Edward moved and I was lost to him, lost in him. There was nothing but the need to move, to increase the friction, to drive the pleasure. His hips thrust roughly into mine and I met each motion with one of my own, my legs wrapped tight around his hips to draw him deeper into me. Over and over he thrust, our bodies crashing together with the force of head-on collisions. We both gave, we both took as we drove each other nearly mindless with need. On twin shouts of ecstasy, we both crashed over the edge, clutching each other as the pleasure nearly ripped us to shreds.

Though neither of us needed the oxygen, we were both panting as we clung to each other in the aftermath. Like two lone survivors of a tornado, clinging to the one remaining girder of a ruined building, our arms wrapped around the other.

"Um," I said, looking into his warm, golden eyes. I waited for the warmth to flood my cheeks, the rush of my embarrassment over my own boldness just moments before. But it never came. I realized then that I would never blush again.

"Um…?" Edward said, repeating my stammer as he found my eyes and stared into them.

"I wasn't. I mean, I wasn't too…did I hurt you?"

Edward's laugh bounced off the trees surrounding us, then he lowered just enough to press kiss after kiss to every inch of my body he could reach. "Hurt me? No, love. You didn't hurt me."

"I…are you sure? I went a little…," I had to stop because it was getting harder to concentrate. I kept expecting my body to have reactions it couldn't have now. I was still waiting for the blush, the fluttering heartbeat, the clammy hands, all the usual signs of my embarrassment that wouldn't, couldn't, happen anymore.

"Bella, I assure you, I'm fine. More than fine," he grinned and rolled us until I was sprawled across his chest, looking down into his topaz eyes.

I raised my hand and laid my palm across his cheek then let my fingers trace patterns over his face. "No more regrets then?" I asked, my eyes focusing on my fingers, unable to meet his eyes.

"I will always regret taking your human life from you, Bella," he said softly, then took my fingers in his hand. He tugged on my hand until my eyes met his. I swallowed the fear clogging my throat and opened my eyes, gasping slightly when I saw the laughter in his.

"I will regret that, Bella," his smile widened even further as he spoke, "but I think I can learn to live with my regrets, in time. After all," his fingers traced the curve of my spine from my neck all the way down, causing another shiver of desire to take hold of me, "there are compensations I never expected."

His eyes met and captured mine, heat burning through each of our gazes, and I felt him move inside me, his body already recovered.

"I like those compensations," I said, my voice low and thick with the need that spiked through me the moment my body registered Edward's renewed desire.

He raised up to kiss me then, his eyes dark and hungry, but stopped mere inches from my lips, the look on his face pained to the point of comical. "Edward?"

Edward shook his head. "Alice."

I gasped and, stupidly, made a move to try and cover myself, cover us, before she arrived. That only served to make Edward's comical grimace turn into a chuckle.

"It's all right, love. She stayed far enough away so that I could only hear her. She said there are some pictures she doesn't want in her head, and my bare ass is one of them," he stopped then to raise up and kiss me before continuing.

"Why did she come out here then?"

"To let us know that our presence is requested back at the house whenever we can spare a few minutes. Everyone wants to welcome you to the family officially. Alice called me a few choice names for selfishly keeping you to myself."

"I've never minded when you're selfish," I said with a smile, lowering to kiss him before I started to move away. His arms were around me in a flash, holding me to him.

"Just where do you think you're going?"

"But Alice said...," I protested.

"Alice says a lot of things, Bella. Wants a lot of things, too. But as she's been harping on me for weeks now about my lack of patience, I think it's time she learned some of her own." His hands drifted to my bottom, fingers pressing against the unyielding skin as if to make his point.

Then he spent the next hour proving that point to me in the most delicious way.

Later, much, much later, I managed to disentangle myself from Edward's arms. I should have been shaky or dizzy or even sore from spending so long on the forest floor engaged in all manner of physical activities. At the very least, I should have staggered a few steps. But I didn't.

When I stood I was still and steady as if I'd been standing there for hours. It was going to take some getting used to, this sudden sense of grace. I wondered for a moment how long it would take me to stop expecting to fall every few minutes.

Then I realized we had rather large problem if we were heading back to the house.

"Um, Edward?"

"Yes?"

"We can't go back to the house."

"Why not?"

I huffed, then gasped. "Well, you might not have a problem parading past your family wearing nothing, but I'd rather not if it's all the same to you." I gestured towards the fragments of clothes surrounding us on the forest floor, none larger than a handkerchief.

I looked up and met Edward's eyes, surprised to see my crooked smile turning the corners of his mouth and lightening his eyes. "Oops?"

I laughed then too, remembering back to that first kiss. When his simple experimental kiss had resulted in nothing less than a full attack from me. "Guess we've never had much control about each other, have we?"

I was glad to see none of the shadows in his eyes when I mentioned control. To see nothing but the same smile he'd been wearing most of the afternoon and into the evening.

Edward simply walked over to me and took my hand, raising it so his lips could brush the back of it. "Alice left us clothes to change into when she came earlier," he said softly. "She thought there might be a need."

"Thought there might be a need?" I asked, my eyebrow raising.

Edward looked sheepish. "I thought that was a better way to say 'she saw us out here ripping each other's clothes to shreds and knew we'd need replacements before we came home,'" he paused, looked into my eyes with a smile. "Was I wrong?"

My free had flew to my cheek, still waiting for a blush that would never come. I laughed instead. "No, you weren't wrong. I suppose that's something else I'll have to get used to? Alice seeing everything, not just the weather and what I'll wear a week from Tuesday?"

He kept my hand as we started towards where Alice had left the clothes. "She tries very hard to not look in that direction. Just as I try to keep others thoughts quiet in my head most of the time," he grinned and bumped his hip against mine, "self preservation, you know."

We walked in silence for a time, content with human speed, content to just be together. We were close to the trailhead when we found the small backpack filled with jeans and sweaters for us to change into when my brow furrowed.

"Bella? What is it?"

"I just...it's nothing really, but I just wondered. One question that never did get answered."

Edward was in front of me a half second later, his hands cupping my face, eyes searching mine. "What, Bella?"

I looked up and into his eyes, my smile wide on my face. "Whatever happened to my truck?"

There was a moment of silence before Edward threw back his head and laughed. "She's facing eternity as a vampire, and she asks about her truck?" he asked himself, shaking his head but seeming to finally accept that I was fine, more than fine, with my new life.

It was a new Edward that walked beside me through the forest, talking of everything and nothing. He wasn't in pain, he wasn't berating himself, he wasn't worried about anything. I thought that it would take me a while to get to know this new Edward, the one unencumbered by constant worry and self-recriminations.

"What's that smile mean?" Edward asked as we neared the house.

I laughed. "Nothing, really. I was just wondering what you were going to do with all your free time now that you don't have to worry about me anymore?"

He laughed again, long and full, and swung me into his arms. He grinned down at me, a grin that looked more like a leer. "I'm sure I can think of something to fill the time," he said on a low whisper.

"Anything I can do to help?"

"Oh, I certainly hope so," he growled back, seconds before his lips met mine in a long, lingering kiss.

"I love you," I said breathlessly when his mouth finally released mine. "Forever."

"As I love you, Bella. For eternity."

Hard as it was not to succumb to a rising need for him, and his need for me, we managed to pull apart and finish our walk towards the house. We would give my new family time to welcome me, Carlisle time to question me, Esme time to fuss, Emmett time for his teasing and lamenting the loss of my blushes, Alice time to squeal and dance and make plans for redecorating our room in the big house.

We would give them that, because we had forever for the rest. As I felt the warmth of Edward's hand in mine, I thought that just might be long enough.

~Fin~


End file.
